The Grey Man

Gremmat and I therefore went back to our company with the news, but the best of it – the part concerning the yett-house – I kept to myself. For the Laird of Gremmat, though a tough fighter, was not a man of penetration, so that I well deserved the credit of telling what I alone had seen.

When I told the chiefs of my discovery, my Lord of Cassillis said nothing but turned abruptly to the Tutor, thinking nothing of my tidings or of the danger I had been in to bring them. Nevertheless Sir Thomas, my master, turned first to me, as was his kindly custom.

'It is well done of you, Launcelot. The sheep herding on Kirrieoch has given you an eye for other things,' he said.

And at that I think the Earl gave me a little more consideration, though all that he said was no more than, 'Well, Tutor, and what do you advise?'

'I think,' said the Tutor, 'that you and the younger men had best take Launcelot's advice, and conceal yourselves in the pend of the yett-house, with picks and, perhaps, a mickle tree for a battering-ram, while I and a trumpeter lad summon Kelwood himself to surrender. In that clump of trees over there we shall be out of reach of their matchlocks.'

So the Earl took the advice, and in a little we were in the black trough of the pend, with an iron-bolted door in front and the rough, unhewn stones of the wall on either side of us.

Then the Tutor's trumpet blew one rousing blast and then another, till we could hear the stir of men roused out of their sleep in the tower above us. But we ourselves held our breaths and keeped very quiet.

Once more the trumpet blew from the clump of oak trees over against the main gate.

'Who may ye be that blaws horns in the Kelwood without asking leave of me?' cried a voice from the narrow window in the wall above us.

And my master, Sir Thomas, answered him from the coppice, —

'It is I, Kennedy of Culzean, that come from your liege lord to demand the treasure that is his, stolen from his house by his false servant and now reset by you, Laird Currie of Kelwood.'

The Laird laughed contumeliously from his turret window.

'An' the Earl wants his treasure, let him come and fetch it,' said he.

At which answer it was all that we could do to keep the Earl quiet. He was for setting the squared tree to the door at once.

'Kelwood,' again we heard the voice of Sir Thomas, 'I ken well who has deceived you in this matter. Listen to no glosing words. No man can strive with the Kennedy and prosper in all these lands 'twixt Clyde and Solway.'

'Which Kennedy?' cried Kelwood, from his window, fleeringly. And this set the Earl more bitterly against him than ever, for it was as much as to say that the Bargany Kennedies were equal in power and place to his own house of Cassillis.

'Lift the trees and to it!' he cried, and with that, being a strong man of his own body, he garred a great fore-hammer dirl against the iron of the door. And though he had many faults, this forwardness should be minded to him for good. Then there was a noise indeed, coulters and fore-hammers dinging merrily against the door, while from aloft came shouts and the rolling of heavy stones down about us; but by my strategy there was not one came near to hurting us. The defenders might have been so many sparrows fyling the roof, for all the harm they did to us. But nevertheless, they banged away their powder and shouted. We that were with the Earl shouted none, but kept dourly to our work. Stark and strong was the bolted door of Kelwood, and all the might of our men could do it no injury, nor so much as shake the hinges. It must have been the work of a deacon among the hammermen.

But I felt that we were against the wall of the kitchen, for one side of the passage was warm, on my right hand, and the other clammy and cold. So I cried on them, to leave the door and pull down the stones of the jamb on my right. Then since I had given them good advice before, and they knew that I was of the household of the wise man of Culzean, they were the more ready to take the counsel, though they thanked me not a word, but only lifted the tree and drave at it.

'Make first a hole with the crowbars,' said I. 'Pull down the stones; they are set without lime under the harling.'

So they did it, and we found the first part of the wall as I had said, not difficult of conquest; but the inner, being cemented with shell lime, was like adamant. Therefore, with a shout, we set the tree to it, swinging it in our hands. After many attempts we sent the butt of it crushing through, and then, before the enemy could come to the threatened place, we had made a hole large enough for a man to enter on his hands and knees. I was leaping forward to be first within, but Gremmat got in front of me and crawled through. Whereat the Laird of Kelwood himself came at him with his gun, and shot Gremmat in the kernel of the thigh, so that he dropped in a heap on the floor, and was ever thereafter unable of his legs. But I that came second (and right glad was I then that I had not been first) rose and set my point at Kelwood, for he was tangled up with the reeking musket. I had him pierced before ever he had time to draw, and was set in defence for the next that might come, when the Earl and the other gentlemen came rushing past us both, and completely invaded the place of Kelwood, so that all within it immediately surrendered.

Then the Earl was like a man gone mad to find the chest, and questioned the Laird, who, as was somewhat natural, could do nothing but groan on the floor, with my sword-thrust through his shoulder. But in a little they found the box in a cunning wall-press under his bed, where it could not be reached except by moving the whole couch from its place and sliding a panel back – which being done, the secret cavity was made plain.

It had been a harder task to transport young Gremmat back with us than it was to take the treasure – which was in a small enough compass, though heavy beyond belief. But after going a mile or two we left the young wildcap at the house of a good and safe man, who made himself bound to the Earl for his safe keeping till he should be whole of his wound.

CHAPTER V

THE THROWING OF THE BLOODY DAGGER

Indeed it had been no likeable job to deny Cassillis that night. For with the fighting, the treasure, and the reproaches of Kelwood, whom he could hardly be kept from finishing with his own hand, his spirit was apt for wars and stratagems – all the more that he himself had as yet had little experience of blows or the smart of wounds. Kelwood we left with those of his dependents that had been in the tower with him. His wound proved not so serious as it might have been, and in a month he was safe with the Laird of Kerse – which thing occasioned a most bitter quarrel between Cassillis and the Craufords, as indeed hereafter ye shall hear.

It was already greying for the dawn when we reached the House on the Red Moss. Black Peter was at the door, and within the kitchen a large fire was blazing, which, because the night was chill and the sweat of fighting hardly yet well dried on us, we were right glad to see. We laid down the chest in a little trance at the back of the kitchen, setting it upon an oatmeal ark which stood there.

Black Peter went out to hold our horses while we talked together, and left his daughter, a well-favoured lass of about my own years or thereby, to wait upon us. So meeting the lass in the dusk of the trance, on pretext of seeing that the treasure was safe, I took occasion of a kiss of her – not that I liked it over much, or that her favours were precious, but because such like is held a soldier's privilege at an inn, and no more to be disregarded than the reckoning – indeed, somewhat less.

But the wench dang me soundly on the ear for it, so that my head echoed again. Yet I liked her better for that, because it made the adventure something worth attempting. 'Go,' she cried, 'grow your beard before ye set up to kiss women. I would as soon kiss the back of my hand as a man wanting the beard to his face.'

Thus she gave me also the woman's buffet of the tongue, and I could have answered her, and well, too, but that I saw behind me my Lord Cassillis himself, and right heartily he was laughing – which, I do admit, disconcerted me no little, and brought me to silence.

'Ah, lad,' he said, 'have ye not learned from your experience of this night that women are just like castles? Ye must reconnoitre them circumspectly before ye can hope to take them by direct assault.'

He went by, giving me a clap on the shoulder, as one that had sympathy both with the winning of castles and of women. And I think he liked me none the worse for it in the long run. But I hoped that he would not make a jest of it nor tell the Tutor of the matter. For my master, Sir Thomas of Culzean, being a grave man and reverend, was not apt to look upon the follies of youth with so kindly and comprehending an eye.

Within the kitchen of the Inn of the Red Moss there was routh of liquor, and all the Cassillis faction were gathered there, quaffing and pledging one another. They were flushed with their success, and several were even keen for assaulting some of the Bargany strongholds at once.

But the Tutor cautioned them.

'Mind what ye do. Young Bargany is as a lion compared to that braying ass we left groaning behind us at Kelwood; and John Muir of Auchendrayne has at once the wisest head and the evilest heart in all this broad Scotland. Be patient and abide. We have gotten the treasure. Let us be content and wait.'

'Ay, and by waiting give them the next score in the game!' said the young Earl, scornfully – for he, too, was hot with success.

So they stood about the kitchen with drinking-cups of horn in their hands, while the Earl unfolded a plan of the great house of Bargany, and began to explain how it might be taken.

'But,' he said, 'we must wait till, by some overt and considered act of war, Bargany gives me the chance to execute justice within my Balliary of Carrick, as is my legal right. Then swiftly we shall strike, before that Bargany can reach us with the sword, or John Muir of Auchendrayne foil us by getting at the King with his fox's cunning.'

Hardly were the words out of his mouth when a silence fell upon us. The Earl ceased speaking and inclined his head as though, like the rest of us, he were harkening eagerly for the repeating of a sound.

Then we who listened with him heard something that was like the clattering of horses' feet at a gallop, which came nearer and nearer. There arose a cry from the front of the house – that wild, shrill scream, the unmistakable parting cry of a man stricken to death with steel. Then broke forth about the Inn of the Red Moss, the rush of many horses snorting with fear and fleeing every way, the while we, that were in the house, stood as it had been carved in stone, so swift and unexpected was this thing.

The Earl remained by the table in the centre, with his hand yet on the plan of the house of his enemy. Sir Thomas was still bending down to look, when all suddenly the glass of the window crashed and a missile came flashing through, thrown by a strong man's hand. It fell with a ring of iron across the paper that was outspread on the table. It was a dagger heavily hiked with silver. But what thrilled us all with fear was, that the blade of it was red nearly to the hilt, and distilled fresh-dripping blood upon the chart.

Then was heard from without something that sounded like a man laughing – but as of a man that had been longtime in hell – and again there came the galloping of a single horse's feet. The first in all in the house to run to the door was no other than the young lass I had tried to kiss. She flung the door open and ran to a dark, huddled thing, which lay across the paving stones of the little causeway in front of the inn.

'My father – oh, they have slain my father!' she cried.

We that were within also rushed out by the front door, forgetting all else, and filled with dread of what we might see.

The dawn was coming red from the east, and there, in the first flush of it, lay Black Peter, plain to be seen, a dark tide sluggishly welling from his side, and his young daughter trying pitifully to staunch it with the bit laced napkin wherewith she had bound her hair to make her pleasant in the men's eyes.

When Peter of the Red Moss saw the Earl, he tried to raise himself upon his elbow from the ground. One feeble hand went waveringly to his head as if to remove his bonnet in the presence of his chief.

Cassillis sank on his knees beside him and took the hand. There was a fragment of a leather rein still clasped in it, cut across with a clean, slicing cut.

'Peter, Peter, poor man, who has done this to you?' he asked.

The man that was about to die turned his eyes this way and that.

'My lord, my lord,' he said, struggling with the choking blood that rose in his throat, 'it was – it was – the grey man – !'

And the Earl listened for more with his ear down to Peter's mouth, but the spirit of the man who had died for his master ebbed dumbly away without another word. So there was nothing left for us to do but to carry him in, and this we did in the young sunshine of a pleasant morning. And the maid washed and streeked him, moaning and crooning over him piteously, as a dove does that wanteth company.