Читать книгу The Grey Man - S. R. Crockett - Страница 13

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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.

I went, as it happed, into the trance to fetch her a basin of clear water. The top of the meal-ark stood empty!

'My lord—the chest!' I cried, and all save the maid alone rushed in. The treasure of Kelwood was gone! Without the door, on the trampled clay and mud, there were the steads of naked feet many and small. But of the treasure-chest for which we had ventured so much that night, we saw neither hilt nor hair, clasp nor band.

Only in the kitchen of the house on the Red Moss there was a dead man, and a maid mourning over him; on the table a dagger, red to the guard, and from it fell slowly the drip of a man's life blood, blotting out with a bitter scorn the plans of our wisest and the enmity of our proudest.