MAID MARGARET OF GALLOWAY

The Life Story of her whom Four Centuries have called “The Fair Maid of Galloway”

BY S. R. CROCKETT

The memory of her beauty lives

LONDON HODDER AND STOUGHTON 27 PATERNOSTER ROW 1905

CONTENTS

Chapter I. Bread-and-Water—and Kitchen Thereto!

Chapter II. One Leg Green and One Leg Pink

Chapter III. Cour Cheverney

Chapter IV. A Good Fight

Chapter V. Furry Ears

Chapter VI. William Douglas Speaks

Chapter VII. A Young Maid’s Lovers

Chapter VIII. Margaret of Margarets

Chapter IX. The Garden at Amboise

Chapter X. “La Belle des Belles”

Chapter XI. The Mists of Dee

Chapter XII. What Maud Lindsay taught Me

Chapter XIII. The Last Grains in the Sand-Glass

Chapter XIV. Ave, Amor—Atque Vale!

Chapter XV. The Great Heart of a Man

Chapter XVI. A Married Maid

Chapter XVII. The Cottage by the Three Thorns

Chapter XVIII. The Penance of Jock the Penman

Chapter XIX. The Scent of the White Thorn

Chapter XX. Instruction in Loving

Chapter XXI. Douglas rides Late

Chapter XXII. The Douglas bids Good-bye

Chapter XXIII. The First Stroke of Doom

Chapter XXIV. His Hour

Chapter XXV. James Douglas, Benedict

Chapter XXVI. The One Ewe Lamb

Chapter XXVII. The White Face of Fate

Chapter XXVIII. I see a Star

Chapter XXIX. Dies Iræ I—Gloaming

Chapter XXX. Dies Iræ II—With Garments dyed in Blood

Chapter XXXI. Dies Iræ III—The First Day of the Wrath

Chapter XXXII. Dies Iræ IV—How the Sun went Down

Chapter XXXIII. Arkinholm

Chapter XXXIV. A Maiden left Alone

Chapter XXXV. The Eagles are gathered together

Chapter XXXVI. The Young Man in Black

Chapter XXXVII. Whom God hath Touched

Chapter XXXVIII. A Prince among Hammermen

Chapter XXXIX. Sholto also is a M‘Kim

Chapter XL. Archibald the Grim

Chapter XLI. In the Front of War

Chapter XLII. Sholto stands in the Breach

Chapter XLIII. In the Night Season, one cometh up

Chapter XLIV. The Woods of Birnam

Chapter XLV. The Peace of Zimri

Chapter XLVI. Jack Neville’s Anne

Chapter XLVII. A Rare Salt Fellow

Chapter XLVIII. Canon Law

Chapter XLIX. Malise does his Work

Chapter L. The Worn Path

ADVERTISEMENT

These papers were found among the archives of Philip Herault de Douglas, erewhile Lord of Cour Cheverney in Touraine, and Montreal, not far from Nantua in the Bugey. They have, as is evident, been originally written in the North English or Scots Lallan tongue by Margaret Douglas herself. But, by misfortune of years or lacune of transmission, parts of the lady’s narrative have been supplied in the French of a later period, probably by the hand of the aforesaid Philip Herault himself—who was sometime Chancellor to King Henry IV. of France, and claimed consanguinity, if not quite rectilineal descent, from the Scottish house of the Dukes of Touraine, Douglases of the Black. The worthy Chancellor has manifested the truth of the maxim—“like master, like man,” by adding to the simple Scots narrative many notes, of a nature calculated rather to please Maitre François of Meudon, or that high dame Marguerite of Navarre, than the discerning reader of other times, for whom the present transcript is intended. The editor has only glanced at these upon occasion, but the

parts which have had to be translated over again from the French of Chancellor Philip (of the Bar Sinister) remain, in spite of all care of excision and rewriting to the original pattern, perfectly distinguishable to the critical eye.

CHAPTER I. BREAD-AND-WATER—AND KITCHEN THERETO!

Oh, I was so tired—so weary. I could hear my jaw crack at the corners where the strings are, each time I yawned. And not without reason. For I was nearly eighteen and had been two years in the nunnery of the holy St. Brigida of Cheverney.

Lord, Lord! how I hated it—I, Margaret Douglas, who had been the petted of great men and strong men ever since I could remember—ay, and before! I, who had known Maud Lindsay (called the “Snarer of Hearts”) in her best time, who had sworn, when no more than thirteen, that I would outdo her—to end thus, to be despatched like a bale of goods at sixteen years of age out of Scotland! (Well, that I would not have minded so greatly. ’Tis a dull sour place, wet above and boggy below, with much damp mist between!)

But what irked me was that I, who before I could walk had been called the Fair Maid of Galloway, should be let grow fusty and frowsy as the Sister of Mercy who goes from door to door, begging for the poor—all because I had a cousin who wanted to marry me and so keep Galloway and the Highland estates in the family coffer—bah!

Well, at any rate, I had just to bear it. Tinkle-tankle! Oh yes, there went the weary bells, like cracked tin mugs which the gipsy-folk peddle out of their asses’ saddlebags along with coarse cloth for “jupes,” or sleeved waistcoats, and at the bottom red earth for marking sheep withal!

At six o’clock in the morning, black roaring winter or gracious June—out you must turn in this our Convent of the Birch—ay, though you be thrice a princess in your own right. And they would not let you have so much as a drop of warm water in a pottery jar for the foot of your bed (mightily comforting it is to lone women!), nor even suffer you to sleep in your woollen gonelle, which is to say gown, that hath a hood to it, and, being turned head-and-heels, makes an admirable nest for cold great-toes a-nights. I have suffered from cold feet all my days. Indeed, if I had not, perhaps I had been a happier woman.[1]

Then tinkle-tankle all over again and prayers and reading of the Scripture at nine. Never a bite or a sup till half-past ten, when, while you feed in silence, they read to you out of the Lives of the Saints—about how Sister Brigida, afterwards martyred, established this holy order of nuns and died in the hope of a better life. The which I judged to be an espérance noways over-sanguine! For the Good God knows she would have had to travel fast and far, that same holy Bridget, to find a worse life than that rule conventual she established, and which, for my sins, had been transported from the savage land of Ireland (where it belonged) to the sweet and smiling Touraine that lay outside these weary walls. But since you cannot see a smile even thirty miles broad through walls four feet thick, I might just as well have been on the Bog of Allen.

So it went on. Tinkle-tank of bells—whirr of doves’ wings (we had them three times a week to evening refection—the wings oftener than the doves, so far as I was concerned). Coo-roo-coo-roo! From high up in the bell-tower the sound came. Then the buzz of flies and wasps and angry red-bottomed bees trying to find their way through the painted window-panes. Yes, oh yes, it was peaceful, and hungrysome and chastening, and made me wish to be a crow or a sparrow or a midge—I was not at all particular—at any rate something that could fly away into the blue beyond the confinement of these sorrowful walls, within which the Lady Superior for ever snored in her cell and Sister Eulalie yattered eternally at one’s tail, snivelling out threats of punishment if you climbed a tree or so much as took a garden ladder to look over the wall. Not that there was much to see, when you did look over—only the wide spread of the forest and the green fields—not in patches, as in Scotland, with heather and whin-bloom everywhere, but all in

cultivated squares, like a painted chess-board. There were poor men, also, with legs blackened in the sun, half-naked or even with no more than a clout about them, that ran at a look, or shrieked for the clink of an iron ring.

Once I threw over the wall to one of these poor wretches my purple jupe (the colour never became me), which was of warm cloth—also because the weather, being August, made me to sweat when I wore it.

And for this, as well as for speaking to a man, Sister Eulalie docked me of all food save bread-and-water for four days. “Yet,” said I, “Bridget of Kildare, the holy, never had petticoat in her life to bless herself withal! So where is the harm?”

“You have looked upon a man—a mortal sin!” said she, turning up the sourish, plum-coloured tip of her nose, which had a drop on it chilly as winter, even in the summer heats.

“Well, people do not die of it. So did my mother before me!” quoth I, knowing well all the time that I was not wise, yet being tempted, and my choler getting the better of me.

“But he looked upon you,” she cried, raising her voice in order to wake the Superior, “the while you took off”—

“No, no,” I said, willing to appease her if possible before it was too late, “he was no man really, only a wild savage, black as a Moor of Barbary. And, besides, I went down the ladder backwards, and let my jupe fall to the ground betwixt the wall and a gooseberry bush”—

“Silence!” commanded Sister Eulalie, raising her hand, with one finger pointed to the zenith; “silence, or I will take you indoors forthwith to Madame the Superior!”

Then, being at the time but a girl, I pouted, and answered back.

“Why, it is nothing,” I said. “Did not the Scripture which was read from the lectern in the refectory on Wednesday tell of the never-to-be-sufficiently-reverenced Judith who did more than that? Yes, much more, or she is sore belied”—

“Take from me, thou wicked one, six days’ bread-and”—

But at that very moment the great gate opened, and through it I could see, with a train of churchmen behind him—shaven, shorn, clad in white and scarlet and green, with a peaked cap all glittering with gold upon his head—who but Laurence M‘Kim, my old playmate, who had helped to save me (though I had forgotten much of the details) from the terrible Sieur de Retz, at Machecoul. Also, who used to kiss me—I remember that. Yes, it is true, my memory only shows in patches, but the patches are mostly bright ones.

Well, who will blame if I broke away from Sister Eulalie, crying “Larry, Larry!”

Half crying too—or perhaps a little more than half. And so would anyone—yes, anyone! That is, anyone who had been as long as I in the convent-prison of St. Brigida of Cheverney.

I flung myself upon him. He was riding a white mule—oh, finer, much finer than that of the Bishop of Evreaux. And I was so agile from being fed like a greyhound, and with being so very glad to see him, that I would have kissed him if I could. Yes, truly, what is the use of being a princess else! But, as it was, I could only get my arm half about his waist, before Sister Eulalie was upon me.

He bent down to disengage me gently, murmuring in Scots, “Wait a little while!” And then he stretched out two fingers over my head and said in a voice full of the music which first made my uncle take him to Dulce Cor as a chorister, “Bless you, my child!”

As one stricken by palsy, Sister Eulalie fell back, marvelling at the great ecclesiast and his princely retinue. And (best of all) Larry, my Larry, gave her his ring to kiss. It was good to see. Also he queried with his eye if I loved her—if she had been good to me. But I shook my head and frowned till he understood, and nodded, meaning thereby that he had come to do some little regulating of accounts.

“I have been to Rome, sister,” he said; “the point of my right shoe and the four iron shoes of my beast have been blessed by the Holy Father. If there be sin upon you, bend down and kiss them also.”

And while Sister Eulalie was, for her soul’s good, embracing of the beast’s near front hoof (and doing it gingerly, too, for the mule had a spirit of its own), Larry whispered to me, “These behind there do not matter!” At the same time he waved his hand towards his followers. They all with one accord turned their heads from us in the direction of the garden gate.

He then pushed out his foot in the silver stirrup for a mounting step.

“Now!” he whispered.

And in a moment, with the help of his hand, I was up like a bird. And it is past telling how good it was. For, judge ye, it was two years since I had been kissed—by a man, that is. And others do not really count, as I have seen. Well, in a moment I was down again and toying demurely with my rosary, before the white mule and Sister Eulalie had agreed about the salutation of the last shoe of blessed iron. Larry had his people well trained. For nobody laughed. Indeed, what more natural than that I should embrace one of my own folk after two years. Yet what the young man’s manners at Rome must have been, to make them so biddable, it is, as I tell him, better only guessing.

Ah, it was a good world after all—that which God had made; and has a way of improving suddenly when it is at its black worst.

CHAPTER II. ONE LEG GREEN AND ONE LEG PINK

For, after all, Laurence was a good deal older than I. And that makes a difference. Besides, he had known me from the time that Maud Lindsay sent me off to play with him, that she might have the more time (and the better) in which to torment his brother Sholto with her wilfulnesses.

That was, of course, before they were married and had five children. Some time before.

But all of that may be read in the history, that is titled after the chief of our house, The Black Douglas. But that is writ solemnly and of set purpose; also straight on, as a book should be, while this which for my pleasure I am writing contains just the things that a woman has done and thought and heard and seen ever since she was a girl, and is of little value save to herself and to make the winter nights pass.

And so Laurence M‘Kim was an abbot, and, indeed, might have been a bishop had he wished it. But he was not given that way, having enough knowledge of himself to know that he was not worthy. That he was a real Lord Abbot I knew. For had not I myself made him so—or, rather, my cousins William and James, who acted for me, and did not cross me in aught, save only in sending me to this abominable convent!

But that is always the way with men. They give us a thousand things we do not want; they refuse us the one thing we do.

I wonder, indeed, how they would have liked it themselves. William would have spitted the porteress in a week, I know, and broke open the great spiked door. But James, who was ever ready with his answer, had in after-times the effrontery to tell me that he would have liked it, contenting himself always well where women were.

Bah! At any rate, I am not come to that yet. Then I was glad enough to see Larry. Yes, glad with a great gladness that no man can tell. And he did not even damp me when he out with a great folded parchment, all done in purple and black, with the seal of St. Peter hanging to it, almost as big as the great censer of Trèves which only a six-foot man can swing.

And then, last of all, there came out the Lady Superior, whom we maids called the Bald Cat. I mean that I did—I, and two French girls who, for various kittenishnesses wrought in overstrait homes, had been sent to the Sign of the Bald Cat to repent themselves of their sins. The Lady Superior’s other name was Marie Noël de Saint Verrier, and she had (I remarked it myself, but not overtly to Sister Eulalie) as much discernment of the good things of life, or the honest, well-meaning thoughts of men and women, as a sow hath of the perfumes in a flower garden. She had but one table in her decalogue—that at which she did continually over-eat herself; but one article in her credo—that all was right which was done within the convent of St. Brigida of Cheverney, and all wrong that was done outside of it.

Well—there was more done in St. Brigida than was told to Madame Noël de Saint Verrier—otherwise and more exactly the Bald Cat.

But let it be understood that Laurence, Venerable Prior of the Abbey of Holy Devorgil, called Dulce Cor by Solway Side, did not in the least misbecome his errand. Troth, sirs, I wot not! William, my cousin, now Earl of Douglas, would not have sent him else. He was, albeit, a young and personable prelate, also well to look upon—a thing which always had its effect with the Bald Cat—that is, in a man. In girls she could not abide it. She cut their love-locks to the bristle with her own hand, and added an extra six inches to their poke bonnets if their eyes sparkled. But not to mine. For though she had been bidden to be strict with me in the matter of discipline, yet for all that, I was still a princess in my own country, and the daughter of one Duke of Touraine and the sister of another.

But the Bull—the papal Bull!

The Bald Cat took it, fumbling meanwhile for the pieces of Venice glass set together in an oval frame with water between them, by means of which it pleased her to think that she could read. But all the glasses in the world—no, not Agrippa’s ball of crystal itself, could have taught her to read that Papal Bull. It was in Latin, and so after turning it this way and that, she gave it back to the Abbot Laurence, who now stood before her, tall and young and fair to look upon.

“Read it, if you please, your learned reverency!” she said, softly for her.

But Laurence, with a proud gesture, which amounted almost to contempt, handed it to the almoner of the convent, Father Pierre Bartentane, called Gigot from his shape—this, by us ill-behaved girls.

“Let the Lady Abbess hear what says the Holy Father!” he said. “As I am come to carry off her fairest flower, I wish her to understand that I do not misconstrue my warrant!”

I leaped towards Larry, and would have hugged him in my arms.

“Am I indeed quit of this for ever and a day?” I cried in our own Scots, which I knew that none of the others could understand. “Am I to go away with you? Tell me quick!”

“Ay,” said Laurence, turning away his eyes, “you are to go with me. But—I am to take you to marry your Cousin William—my Lord Earl of Douglas.”

“The Man of Iron!” I said.

And I think I made a wry face and shrugged my shoulders—for I was but young, and knew no better. “I had rather it had been yourself I was to wed, Larry,” I said. “And that in spite of your clerkery!”

His face reddened till it became almost scarlet. But he did not look at me as he replied.

“My clerkhood would not stand in my way, God wot—if that were all,” he answered; “but, my lady, I do not forget that I am but a poor man’s son, and my princess’s very humble servant.”

Now, all this about young Laurence M‘Kim being Abbot of beautiful Dulce Cor, and yet no whit a monk (save that he could sing like an angel), may sound strange to ears accustomed to authority episcopal and papal, to monasteries French and Italian. But in Galloway we Douglases minded not the King of Scots at all, wet day or dry day, and the pope only when we had need of him—generally to give us leave to marry within the proscribed degrees, for the sake of the Douglas properties, family tree, and such-like. At other times we of the Southern House did much as we liked, in the Church as in the State, our yea being yea, and our nay nay.

Now, the Douglases of the Red grew great, and are to this day great and high, by reason of truckling and fawning on the king and the Stewarts. But the Douglases of the Black—never! All except my Lord James, that is, and he never could help trying to please all that came his way, man and woman, gentle and simple. For he was ruddy as young David, the shepherd boy that became a king; tall, too, like a god; and my heart—went after him. Ah! but enough of this. The time to tell these things is not yet. All the same, James was always at heart, as in his person, a Douglas of the Red. For me, I am Black of the Black.

It was, of course, impossible that all the great train of honour and of defence which William Douglas, my cousin, had given to the Abbot Laurence to travel to Rome withal should find lodging within the walls of the convent of St. Brigida. Indeed, as these (barring the churchmen) were exclusively soldiers, and dashing blades most of them, it was perhaps as well, or certain variations in the Rule of that most excellent founder might have been introduced.