The Black Douglas | Page 8

TWO RIDING TOGETHER
"Joyous," she cried, as they went, "Oh, most joyous would it be to see
the noble castle and to have all the famous two thousand knights to
make love to me at once! To capture two thousand hearts at one sweep
of the net! What would Margaret of France herself say to that?"
"Is there no single heart sufficient to satisfy you, fair maid?" said the
young man, in a low voice; "none loyal enough nor large enough for
you that you desire so many?"
"And what would I do with one if it were in my hands," she said
wistfully; "that is, if it were a worthy heart and one worth the taking.
Ever since I was a child I have always broken my toys when I tired of
them."

The voices of the singing children on the green came more faintly to
their ears, but the words were still clear to be understood.
"Off to prison you must go, you must go, you must go, Off to prison you
must go, My fair lady!"
"You hear? It is my fate!" she said.
"Nay," answered the Earl, passionately, still looking in her eyes. "Mine,
mine--not yours! Gladly I would go to prison or to death for the love of
one so fair!"
"My lord, my lord," she laughed, with a tolerant protest in her voice,
"you keep up the credit of your house right nobly. How goes the distich?
My mother taught it me upon the bridge of Avignon, where also as here
in Scotland the children dance and sing."
"First in the love of Woman, First in the field of fight, First in the death
that men must die, Such is the Douglas' right!"
"Here and now," he said, still looking at her, "'tis only the first I crave."
"Earl William, positively you must come to Court!" she shrilled into
sudden tinkling laughter; "there be ladies there more worthy of your
ardour than a poor errant maiden such as I."
"A Court," cried Earl William, scornfully, "to the Seneschal's court!
Nay, truly. Could a Stewart ever keep his faith or pay his debts? Never,
since the first of them licked his way into a lady's favour."
"Oh," she answered lightly, "I meant not the Court of Stirling nor yet
the Chancellor's Castle of Edinburgh. I meant the only great Court--the
Court of France, the Court of Charles the Seventh, the Court which
already owns the sway of its rarest ornament, your own Scottish
Princess Margaret."
"Thither I cannot go unless the King of France grants me my father's
rights and estates!" he said, with a certain sternness in his tone.

"Let me look at your hand," she answered, with a gentle inclination of
her fair head, from which the lace that had shrouded it now streamed
back in the cool wind of evening.
Stopping Darnaway, the young Earl gave the girl his hand, and the
white palfrey came to rest close beneath the shoulder of the black war
charger.
"To-morrow," she said, looking at his palm, "to-morrow you will be
Duke of Touraine. I promise it to you by my power of divination. Does
that satisfy you?"
"I fear you are a witch, or else a being compound of rarer elements than
mere flesh and blood," said the Earl.
"Is that a spirit's hand," she said, laughing lightly and giving her own
rosy fingers into his, "or could even the Justicer of Galloway find it in
his heart to burn these as part of the body of a witch?"
She shuddered and pretended to gaze piteously up at him from under
the long lashes which hardly raised themselves from her cheek.
"Spirit-slender, spirit-white they are," he replied, "and as for being the
fingers of a witch--doubtless you are a witch indeed. But I will not burn
so fair things as these, save as it might be with the fervours of my lips."
And he stooped and pressed kiss after kiss upon her hand.
Gently she withdrew her fingers from his grasp and rode further apart,
yet not without one backward glance of perfectest witchery.
"I doubt you have been overmuch at Court already," she said. "I did not
well to ask you to go thither."
"Why must I not go thither?" he asked.
"Because I shall be there," she replied softly, courting him yet again
with her eyes.

As they rode on together through the rich twilight dusk, the young man
observed her narrowly as often as he could.
Her skin was fair with a dazzling clearness, which even the gathering
gloom only caused to shine with a more perfect brilliance, as if a halo
of light dwelt permanently beneath its surface. Faint responsive roses
bloomed on either cheek and, as it seemed, cast a shadow of their