Chapter XXIII A Galloway Raid
As you may suppose, it was no grief, but the reverse, for me to ride away with Bargany to the South, and leave behind me the drear house of Culzean upon that dismal day of doom and sacrifice. Nell Kennedy I saw nothing of, though, as I learned in the aftertime, she saw me. For she too had fled from the house, being unwilling to have aught to do with such a deed of cruel wrong as the marrying of her sister, that was the flower of the West, to an oafish lout like James Mure.
‘Not but what our Maidie can stand up for herself. And if she gets not her own way, sorry am I even for James Mure!’ said she.
It was from the branches of a thick plane that Nell watched us ride away to the house of the Inch, and noted me as I cantered by Bargany’s side. Of which, had I known it then, I should have been fain. For, wild ettercap as she was, I now counted Nell Kennedy almost the only friend I had left.
And as we went, Bargany told me of the Earl’s message brought him by James Young, the Minister of Colmonel. And in especial how he had telled a great lie to win through the men of Galloway—in which sin it was then uncommon for a minister to be found out.
‘Not but that my heart is with the lads of Galloway,’ said Bargany, ‘but after all, Gibby Crack-tryst is the first of the Kennedies, and I shall not see him put down, whatever be his deserts, by Garthland and the Sheriff. If Cassillis is to go down, Bargany shall go with it; and all Galloway, twice told, shall not accomplish that!’
Although I felt chilled by the dull, unheartsome day we had left behind us, I can tell you I thought no little of myself to be thus riding in comradeship with Bargany at my elbow. For though I had so ridden with the Earl once or twice, yet I counted ten times more on Bargany. Forty horsemen were of our company, and mine was the weariest body among them all. For it was my first long day, after my sickness with harness on my back, and pulses beat where my wounds had been, so that I feared that they would break out afresh, and I have to be left behind.
At last we stayed our steeds at a small tenant’s house called Craigaffie, a little way from the Inch, where a vassal of Bargany’s dwelt. Him we sent to meet the Earl and tell him that we were there—also to bid the Galloway men come to an arbitrament, if so they would. For they had enclosed the Earl back and front in his own house of the Inch, so that none could pass—save indeed one that knew the byeways and outgates as did this Peter Neilson of Craigaffie.
Presently there came back from the Earl a message most piteous, for he knew the men of Galloway had him fast; and he was afraid for the safety of the rents and mails that he had with him in silver and minted gold—far more, to do him justice, than he was anxious about his own skin. Bargany was his dearly-beloved cousin, his eame, his saviour. He would keep friendship with him more than with any friend he had all the days of his life, for this notable deliverance he had wrought. He was to come and put himself in the Earl’s hands after he had sent the lords of Galloway about their business. The Earl’s plighted word would be his security.
At this Bargany gave a smile, and set his thumb over his shoulder at the forty swords that were riding behind him.
‘These,’ said he, ‘will be the best security that John, Earl of Cassillis, will not harm me when I go to visit him in his castle of the Inch.’
It was no long season before there came MacDowall of Garthland and Sheriff Agnew to represent the men of Galloway, and never in my life, save when I went as herald to the great house of Kerse, did I see such an exchange of high civilities. It was as the meeting of heroes, when compared to the double-dealing and deceit of our break-tryst Earl. More than ever, I wished that I had been born on the other side of the score. But it hadna bin to be.
Agnew the Sheriff was a tall man, with dark hair quickly frosting to grey, a hawk’s nose, a long arm good at laying on, and a biting tongue which he knew well when to hold. The Laird of Garthland, on the other hand, was red of beard and brown of hair, altogether a man well set, beginning also to be well-stomached with good feeding and sleeping on benches of the afternoons.
It was Garthland who saluted first, for he came of the oldest race in Galloway—save, perhaps, it may be, the MacCullochs of Ardwell. But the eagle-nosed Sheriff was the chief spokesman.
‘Greeting courteously to you, Bargany,’ he said. ‘This is a pleasure unexpected. Over on our poor shire-side, the erne of the hills neither mixes nor mells with the quarrels of the carrion crow.’
‘I greet you well, Sheriff,’ said Gilbert Kennedy; ‘but say your say plain out, without bringing all the birds of the air into the matter.’
‘Plainly then,’ said the Sheriff, ‘the matter is this. The Earl has moved the law against us for rights his father granted us years agone, rights that have never been questioned, and when we will not yield to him, he uses his influence with the King to make us traitors. He sends his low-born officers to remove us from our kindly homesteadings, and from the castles where for centuries our forefathers dwelled—ay, before one stone of Cassillis lay on the top of another.’ And the fire glinted in the Sheriff’s deep-set eyes, till, with his eagle’s beak, he looked himself the very erne of which he had spoken. He went on. ‘Then comes he himself, with a force of forty horse, to reduce the unbroken baronage of Galloway. He summons us to the court of doom, and lo! we come to this yett with a hundred gentlemen, and as many more footmen that but wait to be called. We have obeyed his mandate to the letter, whereat he sulks within gates. Then we send him word that we are at the trysting-place, and that we will be most glad to see his face. But for some reason or other that I cannot guess at, he comes not; but withdraws himself into the house of the Inch, where presently he remains. And we, being bound to see that no ill befalls him within our borders, have set ourselves down to be the warders and the protectors of him and of the castle.’
So said the Sheriff, and made his courteous amend. And to him Bargany replied,—
‘But, Lochnaw, ye know well that ye have no warrant thus to shut up the Earl of Cassillis, immuring your lawful feudal superior and defying ancient custom.’
Then spake the red-bearded Laird of Garthland.
‘If it come to that, we are bound to you and not to the Earl, Gilbert Kennedy. Ye are bound to maintain us in our rights! Am I to lose my auld and kindly office and possession, which I have held in direct line from Uchtred, Lord of Galloway? Of a truth, no, Bargany! Ye are of a conscience overtrue for work of this kind. Ye will do to me your honourable duty, as your predecessors have ever done to mine in time past.’
And having said his say with dignity, the red Garthland held his peace.
I could see very well that Bargany was ill at ease. He liked not the errand he had come on. Blows were very well, but to be process-server sat heavy on his stomach. I heard him mutter,—
‘That I, Gilbert Kennedy, should be doing John of Cassillis’s dirty work! For none other sake than Marjorie’s would I do this thing!’
But he took up his parable with the Lairds of Galloway.
‘Hearken, Garthland and Lochnaw—if, as ye say, I am above ye, well do ye know that the Earl is by law above us both.’
He paused for a moment, wry-face, as though he had swallowed the bitterest drugs of the apothecary. And I saw the Sheriff smile a smile as bitter every whit.
‘Hearken to me. If my lord continue to do ye wrong, and will not use you kindly, by mine honourable word in the hearing of all these friends, I will not only leave his lordship—I will maintain you to the last drop of my blood. But if ye pursue my lord to take his life, seeing that he has sent for me to aid him, I will defend him to the uttermost of my power.’
Then said the Sheriff, ‘Bargany, we are honourable men and peaceful. We are not here to attack the Earl, but to defend ourselves in that thing in which he would do us wrong.’
‘I will deal straightly with my lord,’ said Bargany; ‘be content, and leave the outcome to me.’
‘We are content,’ they replied, both of them as one. ‘We ken a man when we front him, for we ourselves are men. We will abide your judgment, whatever you may command.’
So in a trice Bargany had gotten the Earl to promise all good things, and the Galloway men were satisfied. Thereafter they all dined together with my lord in the house of Inch, and parted very merry. And the men of Galloway convoyed us northward to the braes of Glenap, where the whole force and retinue of Bargany’s servants and friends met us. Thus was the Earl released from durance, and his promises were loud and many, so that we were all well-contented. And I thought that the old feud was at last come to an end.