Chapter XIX Fighting the Beasts
Having shut and locked the armoury door behind me, I stood a great while very still on the steps in the black shadow; for nothing could I see, though I looked till my eyes ached. So I set out with my sword bare in my hand, and my left hand hafting an easily-drawn dagger. I declare if I had only known for certain that the thing which troubled the house was naught but flesh and blood, I had not cared the tickling of a Flemish poulet. For I was growing to rejoice in adventure, believing that my own luck was to win through in safety whatever might befall to others. Indeed I never loved a leg-lagging, grease-collecting life, like that of a burgher or a cellarer. But rather to strip and lay on till the arm dirls with striking—that is, in a just cause, of course. Although sometimes, if your chief so command, one must strike without inquiring with too queasy a conscience, like a mere yea-forsoothing knave, what may be the cause for which ye are set to drive the steel. For it is soldierly to strike first and inquire the cause after—that is, if the man live.
But I ride the wild mare whenever I lay the reins on the neck of my goose-quill. And since I love to keep the pages even and the lines straight, anything that will serve to fill up the tale of my day’s doing goes down. But pleasant writing maketh not always good or full-mattered reading.
I stood therefore awhile outside the armoury door and saw only the drifted snow and the line of white roofs against a dark sky. So, having little hope of discovery by waiting like a dancer outside a ring, I stepped lightly down, being shod in soft double hosen without leathern shoon, so that my feet made no noise on the frosty snow. About the house I stole, gliding from shelter to shelter, till I came to the edge of the cliff, where I could hear, but not see, the breaker waves crisping and clapping upon the shore. At such a time the sea is black. But so much blacker was the night that I saw it not even when I looked straight down upon it.
Turning, I made the circuit of the castle, but still found nothing. Then I minded me how it was by the barn that Sandy had seen the vision which had affrighted him. So I set teeth and gripped blade tighter, and took my way to the barn door. It stood wide and vacant, gaping at me like an open sepulchre.
I will admit that it required all my courage boldly to go in, for it is hard to enter that which is the blackness of darkness to you, with the knowledge that all the while you stand the fairest of targets in the doorway. But because, as my father had told me, it is ever better to pursue than to flee, I stepped within with elbow crooked for the thrust, and dagger arm cleared of the cloak.
But it was as silent in the barn as elsewhere. I did not even hear the rats of which my little David had spoken. I began to think that I had been as needlessly and as childlessly alarmed as he. Then all at once and quite clearly I heard voices speaking together at the outer corner of the granary.
So I went near to a convenient wicket that I might listen, and my very heart and life chilled and thickened, because that the voices were those of our Marjorie and someone else who spoke low and sober—not quick and high like Gilbert Kennedy.
Then was my heart full of disgust that I should find her whom I had loved and worshipped engaging in another midnight tryst, and one that might be no better than a paltry intrigue.
So angered was I that I stole to the door, meaning to break out upon them in violent speech, caring little in mine anger what should happen. But as I came to the edge of the hard-beaten threshing-floor, Marjorie Kennedy came to the door swiftly. Turning in front of the barn, and standing with the shawl thrown back from her head, she spoke to the man she had left, whom as yet I saw not.
‘Remember,’ she said, ‘I promise no more than the bare fact. I tell you I choose the grave before a bride-bed, the worm before such a husband!’
But the man to whom she spoke uttered no word, though he had come nearer to where in the dusk of the doorway I stood with my sword bare in my hand. I could see him plainly now—all but his face, for the tide of darkness was on the ebb. He was the tall, cloaked man whom we knew as the Grey Man.
Behind him, at the angle of the wall, crouched a black mass which yet was human—because, even as I looked, it took something from under a coat, and rose erect beside the Grey Man. As Marjorie vanished these two figures moved towards my hiding-place in the barn. I had no time to do more than glide within, pull a sheaf or two from the mow, and thrust myself, like a sword into its scabbard, within the hole I had made amid the piled grain.
Even as I looked, their dark figures filled up the square of greyness which the open barn door made against the snow. I saw them enter, feeling with their hands, as though to grasp something, yet not making any light to guide them in finding it.
Then indeed I was disquieted, and my very bones became as water within me. For if there is anything trying to the flesh of mortal man, it is to lie still and be groped for in the dark by unknown and horrible enemies. I had a nightmare sense of powerlessness to move, of impotence in the face of peril. I knew that when the blind groping inhuman horror took me by the throat, I should not be able even to cry out. It was like a dream of fever made real.
A moment after I heard a man’s voice speak in a fierce whisper.
‘Ah, here it is! Give me your hand and put strength to it.’
Then in a moment, like the breaking of a dam, the fear quite went from me. They were but common-place robbers after all, and I a craven and a coward to lie still while my master’s goods were being stolen before my eyes.
I leaped out upon them without waiting to think, for I was not feared of a dozen such.
‘Hold!’ I cried. ‘Stand for your lives, gutter-thieves, or I will run you through!’
I stood in the doorway with my sword and dagger in hand, and as soon as I felt one come against the point of my blade, I let him have it with all my might, for it was not a time for half-measures. Then, though I heard the answering cry of wounding, there was no time for further action, for something came at me with a rush like a wild beast of the wood, and the snarl of the springing heather cat. Now there are many things that a lad of eighteen or nineteen may do—things of worth and daring—but he cannot stand against the weight of a strong and well-grown man when he leaps upon him. Therefore I cannot count it to my shame that now I was overcome and overborne. Once and again was I smitten, till I felt the iron, as it had been fire, strike me here and there. And though I felt no pain, there was something warm, which I divined to be my own blood, running down. Then I knew no more.
When I awoke I was in the Grieve’s house, lying on a bed. Sir Thomas Kennedy, my master, and the Earl himself were bending over me. They had unclasped my hand, and now stood back in wonderment at what they found gripped in it.
‘It is the key of the treasure chest of Kelwood—the key with my father, the King of Carrick’s seal graven upon it! Where could the lad have gotten it?’
Yet of a certainty they had taken it out of my tightly-clenched hand, which had been fixed upon something ever since they found me on the barn threshing-floor, where I lay senseless in a pool of my own blood.