Chapter XX The Secret of the Caird
It was, I can avouch, a strange experience for me to lie on my back in the Grieve’s house all through the long days of spring and summer. Kate Allison and her mother were tirelessly kind. The Grieve himself generally set his head past the door as he went and came from his meals, crying mayhap something of the day—that ‘it was warm,’ or that it was ‘a wat yin,’ and thinking it the height of a jest to say to me, ‘An’ what kind o’ weather hae ye below the blankets?’ For with kindly-natured country folk a little jest goes a great way, and serveth as long without washing as a pair of English blankets.
Then in the forenoon Sir Thomas would come in from the castle, opening the hallan door and walking across the Grieve’s kitchen as unceremoniously as he would have done in his own house.
‘My lad, they have made a hand of you, but we will dowse them yet for that!’ was one of his stated encouragements to me. ‘Let me see the clours—hoot, man, they will never mar you on your marriage day!’
And so, kindly and smiling, he would pass out again, walking with his hands behind his back as far as I could see him along the arches of the woodland.
Then would Marjorie come to the door, and inquire for me of good Mistress Allison. But she never accepted of her hearty invite to remain—or, at least, to enter and see the invalid. Gently would she ask after my well-being, and being assured of it, as gently would she go her way—her fair face looking so white and sorrowful the while, that I was wae for her, and for the unkenned secrets of her heart into which God forbid that I should pry.
But that which cheered me most, I think, was the kindness and warm-heartedness showed me without stint, both by Nell Kennedy and Kate Allison. They were no longer flighty and sharp of tongue in speaking to me, but rather spoke freely and sat much in the kitchen, with the door of my room open so that I could see them, nipping and scarting at one another like kittens in their wantonness, which was a great diversion and encouragement to me on my weary bed. And there we had no little merriment, for Nell Kennedy would be saucy and miscall me for my laziness and sloth—also for my lack of appetite, which she called ‘dainty and dorty,’ meaning thereby that I wanted finer meats than they had to give me.
Also, though she was no maid for gossip, Nell would bring me all the clash of the castle-town and farm-town, all the talk that was gone over in the mill, while the thirlage men waited for their grist. Where she got it to tell me I cannot imagine, but it was all like sweet wine to me that could hear naught most of the day and night, but the birds singing without and Mistress Allison clattering wooden platters within.
Also (and that was the kindliest thing she could have done, and touched my heart most of all), she brought to me all my war-harness and accoutrements. My sword, which she had cleaned herself after the scuffle in the barn; the dagger I had dropped when I caught and clutched the key of the Kelwood treasure, wherever that had been gotten—the pistols; the fine new hackbutt which had just come from the town of Ayr, and which Sir Thomas had given me for mine own, as he would have given a child a toy.
‘Give the bairn its plaiks, then,’ said Nell, as she laid them on the bed. ‘Would it love to play with them? Then it shall!’
She spoke in an enticing and babyish way that diverted me, and warmed me too, when I thought she had so much kindliness for me.
So I said, ‘It is monstrously well done of you thus to divert me.’
‘Hoots,’ she said, ‘see what else I have brought you.’
And with that she took from her pocket all the apparatus of cleaning my pieces and sword, besides the links and buckles of Dom Nicholas’s harness and equipment, the sight of which put me in a fever to see him again. Never was anything kindlier done. Also, she brought me from her father’s scanty library such books as she thought I might care to read; though, indeed, I read but little, never having been greatly given to lear—save, as it might be, books of songs, troll-catches, wits’ recreations and such like.
But amongst others she brought me a French manual of fence, which gave me infinite pleasure. For with her help I could spell out the instructions, and the plates of positions I was fain to imitate with my two rapiers, till I had hacked and scarred all the four posts of the bed most grievously. And Mistress Allison declared that it was not safe for anyone to come within the outer door.
But one day my bed-fast practice-at-arms stood mine hostess in good stead, for which afterwards she gave me full thankfulness. It chanced on a certain noontide of heat that all were at the hayfield. Even Kate and Nell had gone to toss the hay, which is a pleasant thing to do in good company, but, i’ faith, ill enough to think on as I lay tossing my weary body, and cursing the luck that tied me here in a dull room—vexed with heat, the weight of bedclothing, and the broad buzzing flies which would light on the corner of one’s nose, each time that sleep was on the verge of flapping down silently with his black wings to bring a welcome shortening of the weary hours. Mistress Allison stole about the kitchen on bare, broad feet, flapping and slapping the flags with them as she carried her cakes to the girdle plate, or swung it from the cleek above the clear baking fire of brown peats. She thought me asleep, for I had cleaned all my arms till I could see myself sitting up in bed, with my pale face and towsed haystack of a head, in every square inch of them.
Kate had brought me that day a book called The Whole Duty of Pilgrims, but finding it full of religious reflections and not tales of the Crusaders as I had hoped, I laid it aside for the Sabbath day, as being more reverent and fitting.
All at once the outer door of the Grieve’s house was thrown back on its hinges, and a great sturdy caird entered—mayhap an Egyptian sorner, or bold robber, such as were vexing the realm at the time, or perhaps only a common muddy rascal of the road.
‘Mistress, I bid you good-day,’ he said. ‘I am hungry and would have meat!’
Plain and quite short he said it—even as I have written it down.
‘In this Grieve’s house of Culzean even gentry folk say “An it please you,” and “By your leave!”’ replied, with some indignation, the mistress of the dwelling.
‘But then I will e’en help myself, without please or leave either,’ cried the villain. And with that he opened a leathern wallet that he had slung over his shoulder, and began to thrust therein, not only the scones, but anything about the dresser and tables that his thievish fancy lit upon.
‘Now, mistress,’ said he; ‘let me have any siller you have in the house, and a well-pleased kiss of your weel-faured moo’ therewith, or else I must do my needs with you!’
And with that he opened a great gully knife, as though he would run at her. Mistress Allison cried out with a strange cry of woman’s fear, which I who had been in battle never heard the like of before. Just at this moment I pushed the bedroom door open with the point of my toe, and sat there looking straight at the man, with a pistol bended in each hand, and both of them trained point blank on the rascal’s heart.
I make bold to say that in all this realm of Scotland there was not any man so exceedingly astonished as this particular sturdy thief at that moment.
‘Drop the knife, sirrah!’ I commanded, as one that cries his orders in a battle.
And the knife rang obediently on the stone floor.
‘Kick it into the corner with your foot— No, not with your hand.’
And reluctantly he kicked the knife away from him.
‘Now, my excellent good man,’ said I, ‘sit you down and put your hands behind you. There and thus, be still where you are, quite in the middle of the floor and not elsewhere.’
So he sat him down, and, keeping my pistols dead upon him, I bade Mistress Allison tie his hands firmly with cord, and give him a settle to lean against. Thereafter I comforted him with stern philosophy.
I told him of his wandering and uncertain life. I showed him conclusively how that he went ever in danger of the hangman’s whip, and that at the end there could only be awaiting for him a shameful death. I told him also that our overlord of Culzean had the power of pit and gallows, and that, on the return of the haymakers, he should be brought out—when in an hour there would be an end of all his misery upon the dule-tree, or tree of execution, which stands by the great gate and bears medlars at any season, but only for an hour at a time.
‘’Tis the most cruel and unjust treatment of poor, beset, far wandering men!’ said the man on the floor. They were the first words he had spoken since he threw down his knife. I wondered he could speak so well.
‘We have heard no complaints, so far,’ I made answer, drily, for the man’s former insolence stuck in my throat. And in especial the thought of what might have happened to mine hostess or the maids, had I not been there upon the bed with my weapons beside me. So I kept him in torment of mind for a space.
At last, as the afternoon ebbed away, and the hour of sundown and homecoming wore on, his anxiety waxed pitiful. He turned and twisted to free his hands, so that the only way I could quiet him was to lift a pistol and point it at him. But even that did not appear to soothe him for any length of time.
At last he raised his head.
‘Master,’ said he, sullenly, but speaking not that ill, ‘ye have me, I grant, in the cleaving of a stick. Now I will tell you a thing you greatly desire to know. Will ye promise to let me go, and I will never meddle you more?’
‘I do not mean that you should,’ said I, ‘nevertheless, what is the thing that you can tell me? And when I know, I shall judge its worth—on the honour of a gentleman.’
‘I can tell you,’ said he, ‘where you will find the treasure of Kelwood!’
‘What bald-crowned blethers!’ I cried scornfully. ‘Pray, how am I to know that you speak the truth? Ye may tell me that it is with the gold cup, at the end of the rainbow!’
‘It is true,’ said the man, ‘I might lie to you; but I will not, for I need my life. It is sweet to me as yours to you.’
‘How can such a life be sweet?’ I asked, daffing with the man in my power—which was ‘bad form,’ as John Mure himself sayeth in his history of the troubles.
‘It is not a time to argue,’ said he, ‘but my life is as pleasant as the trees that toss their branches, and as the free life of the forest.’
‘Too free altogether,’ said I, ‘thus to come in and threaten the life and honour of a decent woman. We must have such freedom trussed and stretched on a tow rope.’
‘I did but fright her,’ said he, sullenly.
‘That is as may be,’ replied I, keeping my pistol trained for his left eye-hole, ‘and in any case it will be all the same in two hours.’
‘But,’ said he, ‘hear me concerning the treasure of Kelwood. Ye have conquest the key. I can tell you where the box itself is. For if I win clear this time, I must escape over seas from the vengeance of the Grey Man.’
‘But you may lie even as you have stolen, and I fear me murdered also, for by your talk you are one of a murderous set.’
‘Of the lying you must e’en take your chance—even as, after telling you, I must take my chance of your cutting my bonds and letting me go.’
‘You have a gentleman’s word,’ I answered him.
‘And how much is that worth in Carrick this day,’ he said harshly and bitterly, ‘even with a bond to back it?’
‘Mine,’ said I, with what dignity I could muster, ‘is worth as much as truth itself’—which, I grant, was but a windy saying.
‘I believe it, and I will trust it,’ said he. ‘The treasure of Kelwood is in the cave of Sawny Bean, on the seashore of Bennanbrack, over against the hill of Benerard.’
And not another word would he say.
So when Mistress Allison had locked herself in the milk-house, and advised me that the haymakers were in full sight, I caused my man to roll himself to the door of the bedroom. There with my sword I cut the bonds.
‘Now,’ said I, ‘take the door sharply, without so much as going to the other side for your bundle or your knife, and then the woods are open to you and the world wide.’
‘I thank you, master,’ he said civilly. ‘When you go for the treasure, I counsel you do not call on Sandy by your leasome lane.’
And with that caution he betook himself into the glades of the wood.