Kitabı oku: «The Grey Man», sayfa 21

CHAPTER XLIII
THE MOOT HILL OF GIRVAN

As may well be imagined, two hundred gentlemen with their retinue of as many more of the commonalty made a gallant stir, and required almost the providing of an army. So that as we went southward the people were well warned to repair to the Court of my Lord Bailzie of Carrick, for the office of Earl John was the greatest of the Lowland hereditary jurisdictions. Though the house of Cassillis has never been so beloved of the people nor yet so careful of their rights as that of the Agnews of Lochnaw, who from very ancient times have been Sheriffs of Galloway.

Nevertheless, it was a right solemn gathering which assembled on the little hill outside the town of Girvan, where such feudal courts had always been held. Within the enclosure, formed by the fluttering blue and gold pennons of the Earl, there was set a high seat for Cassillis himself. In front of him, at a draped table, sat his adviser and assessor, Lawyer Boyd of Penkill, while all round the gentlemen of his house and name sat or stood according to their degree, just outside the line of pennons, within which none might come save the accused and they who gave their evidence.

Then the trumpeter from the summit of the Moot Hill of Girvan made proclamation with three blasts of his horn that the session was open, and that all men's causes were to be brought to the probation.

First there came sundry usual complaints of stouthreif and oppression, for the country was yet very unsettled. A woman cried for vengeance on Thomas of Drummurchie, called the Wolf, for the carrying off of her daughter. But as Drummurchie was already ten times attainted, it seemed as though little would come of it.

But Robert Harburgh strode forward and cried out, 'By your leave, Earl of Cassillis, the Wolf of Drummurchie will carry off no more tender lambs, neither mell with other men's wives any more. The dainty ladies of Ayr need no more draw their purses to rescue him, neither to provide him with costly gear. For he has gone to a country where he shall be keeped bien and warm, beiking forever foment the hottest fires of Satan, so lately his master here on earth!'

And with that he threw the arms and accoutrement of the Wolf on the green with prodigious clatterment.

'But this,' said the Earl John, 'though greatly creditable to our squire and of excellent omen for the peace of Carrick from this day forth, gives not this poor woman again her daughter.'

For he did not wish to assign any reward to Robert Harburgh besides the lands which had already been given him, perhaps desiring to retain so valiant a sworder near to his own person and estate.

'I had been to the house of Drummurchie ere I settled accounts with the Wolf himself,' replied Robert Harburgh, in the same manner of exceeding quiet, 'and there have I set all things in order, sending every man's daughter to her father's house and every man's wife back to his keeping.'

'Retaining none for yourself!' cried Earl John, for daffing's sake. For that was his idea of a jest.

'Whatever my desires, I have married a wife that sees to that – even as hath also my Lord Earl!' quoth Robert Harburgh.

And so the laugh was turned against the Earl John, because all knew how carefully the ancient Countess kept the valleys about Cassillis and the Inch clear of buxom dames and over-complacent maids. For, in his youth, Earl John had the name of being both generally and most subtly amorous.

Yet, strange to say, the jest thus broken at his expense, put the Earl into a good key, for it was only the outlay of money that he grudged. So he cried out, 'Robert Harburgh, your tongue can be as sharp as your rapier. You have rid us of a great curse here in the south, and there is muckle need in these parts of such a sword and such a tongue as yours to keep the landward oafs in civility. You shall have the lands of Drummurchie, with ten men's fighting charges to hold them against all evil folk till such time as the land be quiet.'

And Robert Harburgh bowed low to his lord and retired. As he went I clapped him on the back, and said, 'Robert, I would that my long sword had done as muckle for me.'

'Steady on the hilt! Keep your point low, your tongue silent, and it shall do more!' he answered over his shoulder as he went by.

Then was brought forward James Mure of Auchendrayne, clad only in the suit of russet leather which he had worn under the mail wherein he had been taken. He was ever a hang-dog, ill-favoured oaf, and now looked sullenly and silently upon the ground.

His names and titles were first declared.

'Who accuses this man, and of what?' cried Earl John in loud tones.

And every man in the assembly moved a little, as though he itched to be the accuser himself. But since there was none that directly knew of our adventure, no one stood forth save our Marjorie and Nell, till I myself stepped forth with them, with Robert Harburgh and the Dominie a little behind us.

'Now speak out,' whispered Harburgh of the Long Sword to me, 'and let your nimble wit win you a wife.'

And I looked at Nell, and resolved that if she slipped through my fingers, it should not be the fault of my lack of address.

'Who accuses this man?' cried the herald, taking the word from his master, for the Lords of Carrick and Cassillis were beyond the paltry fashion of pursuivants.

'I do!' said Marjorie Kennedy, and all men set their eyes on her. Neither, so long as the case lasted, did they withdraw their eyes from her face. Then she opened her mouth and spoke firmly and sternly her accusation.

'I, Marjorie, daughter of the Tutor of Cassillis, in law wife to this man, charge James Mure the younger of Auchendrayne with the murder of my father, committed, as all men know, upon the sandhills of Ayr. I also accuse him of the murder of William Dalrymple, the lad who carried the message to Auchendrayne concerning my father's journey.'

'Cousin,' said Earl John, 'you have doubtless abundant proof to support these strange charges?'

Marjorie Kennedy stood up among us, tall like a lily flower, and she held her head erect.

'Hear you, John of Cassillis, and all men,' she said. 'I will tell my tale. Of my own griefs I will say naught, for in no realm do a woman's heart-breakings count for a docken's value. It is enough that my father in the simplicity of his heart gave me to this man, as an innocent sacrifice is cast to a monster to appease his ravening. These many months I dwelt in this man's castle. I have been prisoned, starved, tortured – yet all the Mures in Auchendrayne could neither prevail to break my resolve, nor yet could they close my mouth concerning the things which I saw.

'And now I, that am no more bound to this man than I was when he took me out of my father's house of Culzean – I, who have never looked upon him that is my wedded husband save with eyes of hatred, never lain by his side, stand here to denounce James Mure and his father for black, cruel, repeated, defenceless MURDER!'

CHAPTER XLIV
THE MURDER UPON THE BEACH

Marjorie Kennedy rang out the last words like a trumpet. Not even the Earl's herald could have been heard further.

'All men hear my tale before they judge,' she went on. 'It was the morn before my father's death-day. From my window in the house of Auchendrayne I had seen this man and his father, with Thomas of Drummurchie and Walter of Cloncaird, come and go all day with trappings and harness, because they knew that the time was nigh at hand for my father's riding to Edinburgh. It chanced that I was looking down through the bars of my prison-house, for there was little else to do in the house of Auchendrayne. It was about eleven of the clock when I saw a young lad, dusty from head to foot, venture a little way within the castle yett and stand as one that looks about him, not knowing where to turn. The court was void and silent, and the lad seemed distressed. But while he thus stood James Mure and his father came down the turnpike stair and stepped, talking whisperingly together, out into the flagged court.

'It was John Mure the elder who first saw the lad and called him. I saw the boy put a letter into his hand, the which he opened carefully and read, passing it to his son, who read also. Then James Mure stepped back and called Thomas of Drummurchie and Cloncaird. They came both of them, and the four bent their heads together over the writing.

'Then in a little John Mure closed the letter again as it had been and gave it with certain charges to the boy.'

'Saw you that letter or knew you aught of its contents?' asked the Earl John.

'Nay,' said Marjorie Kennedy, 'my window was too far from, them, and they spoke low and with privity among themselves.'

Then was my time.

'My Lord Bailzie of Carrick,' said I, 'may it please you it was I, Launcelot Kennedy of Kirrieoch, some time squire to Sir Thomas of Culzean, who sent that letter. I sent it from Maybole by the hands of William Dalrymple, the lad whom the Lady Marjorie saw come within the castle yett of Auchendrayne.'

The Dominie stood forward.

'And it was I, Robert Mure, schoolmaster in the town of Maybole, who wrote that letter. I wrote it as Launcelot Kennedy set me the words, for he is a man readier with the sword than the pen, though he hath some small skill even of that. But that day he was hot upon his game of golf (which I hold to be but a foolish sport which rapidly obscures the senses), so I, having, as is mine office, pen in hand, wrote the letter for him. Also I sent one William Dalrymple, called for a nickname Willie of the Gleg-foot, with it to John Mure at his house of Auchendrayne. I bear witness that after a space this boy came back, with the story that he had found John Mure from home. But when we charged it upon him that the letter had been thumbed and opened, he grew confused and confessed that he had been compelled to bring back that message by Mure himself, who had broken the seal and given it again to him, even as the Lady Marjorie has said.'

'And what further proof do you offer of all this?' asked the Earl, bending forward with eagerness to catch the Dominie's words.

The Dominie put his hand into the inner pocket of his coat and pulled out, among various pipe reeds and scraps of writing, a letter which he kept carefully folded in a leathern case by itself.

'There is the thing itself; may it please your lordship to look upon it,' said he, calmly. And as soon as he had said that, the Earl rose eagerly to see the famous missive which had drought about all this turmoil. There was also a stir among the folk that were gathered about, for all strained their eyes as if they could see that which was going on, and read the writing at that distance.

'It is a most notable proof,' said the Earl, 'and so we receive it. But can you not produce the lad William Dalrymple?'

'That can we not,' said the Lady Marjorie; 'but I, and I alone, can tell you all the story of his death – blacker even than the other, because done to a young lad against whom even these cruel murderers could allege no quarrel.'

And again there could be heard the sound of men settling down to deep attention throughout all the crowd at the diet of Justiceaire. And they even crowded in a little past the pennons, so that the heralds had to beat upon the ground with the butts of their halbards, as though to bruise their feet, before they could force them to give back. But James Mure abode stupidlike and sullen before his judge, while his accuser stood not three feet from him and told her story.

'It was just when the bruit of my father's death began to go abroad against the Auchendraynes,' so Marjorie Kennedy again took up her tale, 'and when John Mure the elder began to fear that the matter of the letter would be made manifest, that I again saw the little lad William Dalrymple. One night I observed James Mure leading him rudely by the neck into one of the barred cells which underlie the stables. And to that place with his own hands he carried food and water once every day thereafter.

'Then came to visit John Mure one Sir Robert Montgomery, the Laird of Skelmorlie. And with him they sent the lad, on pretext to be a page at his house of Loch Ranza, which he keeps for the King's hunting lodge on the Isle of Arran. What befell there I cannot tell, but it was not many weeks before William Dalrymple was back again. And this time they sent him (as he told me afterwards) to the Lowlands of Holland, there to serve in the Lord Buccleuch's regiment, which, first as a trumpeter and after as a soldier, he did. Nevertheless, being but young, he wearied easily of the stress and chance of foreign war, and so returned as before.

'Then when, in spite of all, the boy came back, and it was told to John Mure that William Dalrymple was again in his native town, he was neither to hold nor to bind. He neither rested nor slept till he had again brought the lad to his house, where he abode for some weeks, but not so closely shut up as before, so that it was often my chance to see him as he came and went about the court, and even to converse with him. But in a little while he vanished, and from that time I saw him no more.

'Now, the bitterness of my life and my desire to bring to justice the murderers of my father caused me at last to quit the house of Auchendrayne. For now I held, as I thought, the strings which would draw mine enemies to their doom. So upon a night I had it set to escape, she that was my maid helping me, with one other that was a body servant of Auchendrayne's and my tire-woman's lover.

'When I came out I found a pony waiting for me, and it was my purpose to ride to the house of my kinsman, the Earl of Cassillis. But, as I journeyed, what was my great affrightment to come upon a company of two, who rode some little way before me. I could easily have turned bridle-rein and ridden another way, but for something which came into my heart to make me follow on. For in a trice I recognised the riders to be John Mure and his son, the father being wrapped in his great cloak of grey, as is his custom. And by this I knew him.

'So I followed them, but not very near. And because my beast was a stable companion of their horses, he went after of his own accord – till, by the first breaking touch or morn we came to a waste place upon the edge of the sea, where in a secret dell I dismounted and tied my pony to a broom-bush which shot out over a sandy hollow.

'Then, yet more secretly, I followed them across the sandhills, and on the very edge on the links, where the turf ceases underfoot and there is only sand, John Mure and his son, this man before you, waited. For a while they stood listening and talking low together, so that, though I lay hidden behind a whin which overgrew a little turfy dell, I could neither hear what was said, nor yet by reason of the bareness of the sand, dared I to adventure nearer them. 'But they waited not long before one came down to meet them over the turf, bringing a lad with him. Then, immediately James Mure whistled a call, and the reply came back in like manner.

'"You are late, James Bannatyne," I heard John Mure the elder say; "what has taigled you?"

'"My sea cloth is not so well accustomed to night ploys as your cloak of grey!" the man growled as he came along sullenly enough.

'Then the three men of them walked a little apart, and came in their circuit very near to the hollow where I lay. While down on the shore the young lad stood and yawned, with his hands in his pockets, like one that shivers and wishes he were back in bed. Nor had he, I am confident, even then any thought of evil.

'But the talk of the three, as I heard it in snatches, was black and bitter.

'The darkest counsel was that of the man who stands here, for James Mure said only, "The dead are no tale-pyets." And again, "We have had enough of this silly, endless, hiding-and-seeking work. Let the earth hide him, or the sea keep him – and be done with it!"

'Now John Mure the elder, and the man whom they called James Bannatyne, seemed at the least inclined to discuss milder councils. Bannatyne was all for sending the lad over to Ireland. And John Mure listened as though he might be persuaded. Yet I knew his guile, for even when he stood with his back to his son, I saw him lift up his hand for a signal. And with that and no more, James Mure rushed at the poor lad and overbore him to the ground. And there upon the sands of the seashore, this James Mure set his knee on the bairnie's breast, and with bloody hands choked and worried him till there was no life left in the lad. And his father also went and held the lad when he fought, his white, reverend beard waggling in the wind, till at last the bairn lay still. But James Bannatyne stood by and clasped his hands, as the boy tossed and struggled for his dear young life, for I think he was now mainly sorry that he had brought the lad to his death.

'Then I could stand the vileness no longer without protest. So I, Marjorie Kennedy, even though I well knew that they would certainly do the like to me, rose from my hiding-place in the sand-hollow, and cried, "Murderers, cease from your cruel work. God will come and judge you!"

'Whereat John Mure came hastily to where I stood and gripped me. "You have seen all," he said, "then you must die. Let us see if God will come and help you!"

'So I defied them to do their worst with me, for madness had come upon me at the sight of the monstrous cruelty to an innocent bairn. And for the time I cared not what should become of myself.

'Then I called to James Bannatyne requiring of him to declare if he too were a murderer like the other fiends, and to call upon him to protect the innocent.

'"We will settle all that in the one payment, mistress," said John Mure to me.

'So by force I was compelled to abide with them, John Mure the elder taking me cruelly by the arm, while he sent the others to cast into the sea the dead body of the lad. But even so oft as they threw him in, so often the waves cast him out again upon the shore; and that though there was a strong wind off the land, which blew the tops from the waves and drave the sand in hissing streams into the sea.

'So when for the third time the boy had been tumbled upon the beach, John Mure bade Bannatyne bring his boat, saying that they would cast the loon afloat out in the deeps of the bay, so that the outerly wind might drive him to the coast of Ireland. After that they would return betimes to attend to other matters – by which I took him to mean that they would do that for me, which I had so lately seen them do for the young boy. And, indeed, I looked for no other mercy at their brutal hands. So in a little space James Bannatyne brought his boat, and with hard endeavour they launched her, and compelled me to accompany them. There was a strong wind from the east, and we were soon blown far out into the wild sea. There they cast the body of the lad overboard, and turned to make again for the shore. But though they all took oars and laboured in rowing, sames Bannatyne taking twain, they could make nothing of it; but were rather worse than they had been before they started.

'So they began to be afraid, and I was right glad thereat, for I looked that the doom of the twice guilty murderers should speedily come. And so the pain of this trial and my witnessing might have been spared.

'Now the Mures were the most fearful of the quick-risen storm, being as it were inland bred. It was all that James Bannatyne could get them to do to sit still.

'"Ye will wreck us all and send us red-hand before our Maker, with the lad's body not cold in the water, and his spirit there to meet us at the Judgment seat!" said he.

'And with that John Mure rose in his place, and in despite of the swaying and plunging of the ship, into which the water came lashing, he cried out, "The Wraith, the Wraith! It is following us – we are doomed!"'

'And lo! when I looked, I saw that which chilled me more than the whistling tempest. And if it feared me to the soul, judge ye what it must have been to the guilty men whose hands were yet red with the blood of the innocent.

'For there, not thirty yards behind the boat, and following strongly in our wake, as a stark swimmer might do, now tumbling and leaping in the wash of the seas and now lunging forward like a boat that is towed, was the murdered boy himself. And thus he followed with a smile on his face, or what looked like it in the uncertain light of the morning.

'So with that the men who rowed fell on their faces and could not look any more, though the prodigy followed us a good while. Only John Mure sat wrapped in his grey cloak steering the boat, and I sat beside him. Little by little we came to the land, but as it had been sideways, having been driven by the wind to the other side of the wide bay.

'There we disembarked and the Mures kept me close all that day in a place of strength on the seashore, till it was night. They plied me to promise silence, for they believed that I would keep my word if once I pledged it. They offered me all that they had of honour or place in the country. There was nothing, they said, that was not within the power of their compassing. For since the death of Gilbert of Bargany the King needed someone in Carrick strong enough to count spears with the Earl of Cassillis.

'But very steadfastly I withstood them, declaring that I should certainly reveal all their murder and treachery, both in the matter of the death of my lather, and in that which I had seen done upon the sands to the young lad William Dalrymple.

'So finally seeing that they could prevail nothing, they went out and kept silent watch by the door till the even. Then as soon as it was dark they opened the lock and bade me come forth. And this I did, knowing for a certainty that my last hour was come. Yet my life had not been so pleasant to me as to be very greatly precious. So I followed them with no very ill will, nor yet greatly concerned. Then on the craggy top they gave me, for the sake of their house and good name (as they said), one more chance to swear silence. This I would not accept, and they, being startled with the approach of a boat upon the water which steered towards our light, pinioned my arms, and thrusting something into my mouth, forthwith threw me over the cliff into the sea. And as to the mode of my rescuing and standing here before the Earl my cousin, young Launcelot Kennedy, my father's squire, can tell. And also my sister and Robert Mure of Maybole.'