The Grey Man

And again there could be heard the sound of men settling down to deep attention throughout all the crowd at the diet of Justiceaire. And they even crowded in a little past the pennons, so that the heralds had to beat upon the ground with the butts of their halbards, as though to bruise their feet, before they could force them to give back. But James Mure abode stupidlike and sullen before his judge, while his accuser stood not three feet from him and told her story.

'It was just when the bruit of my father's death began to go abroad against the Auchendraynes,' so Marjorie Kennedy again took up her tale, 'and when John Mure the elder began to fear that the matter of the letter would be made manifest, that I again saw the little lad William Dalrymple. One night I observed James Mure leading him rudely by the neck into one of the barred cells which underlie the stables. And to that place with his own hands he carried food and water once every day thereafter.

'Then came to visit John Mure one Sir Robert Montgomery, the Laird of Skelmorlie. And with him they sent the lad, on pretext to be a page at his house of Loch Ranza, which he keeps for the King's hunting lodge on the Isle of Arran. What befell there I cannot tell, but it was not many weeks before William Dalrymple was back again. And this time they sent him (as he told me afterwards) to the Lowlands of Holland, there to serve in the Lord Buccleuch's regiment, which, first as a trumpeter and after as a soldier, he did. Nevertheless, being but young, he wearied easily of the stress and chance of foreign war, and so returned as before.

'Then when, in spite of all, the boy came back, and it was told to John Mure that William Dalrymple was again in his native town, he was neither to hold nor to bind. He neither rested nor slept till he had again brought the lad to his house, where he abode for some weeks, but not so closely shut up as before, so that it was often my chance to see him as he came and went about the court, and even to converse with him. But in a little while he vanished, and from that time I saw him no more.

'Now, the bitterness of my life and my desire to bring to justice the murderers of my father caused me at last to quit the house of Auchendrayne. For now I held, as I thought, the strings which would draw mine enemies to their doom. So upon a night I had it set to escape, she that was my maid helping me, with one other that was a body servant of Auchendrayne's and my tire-woman's lover.

'When I came out I found a pony waiting for me, and it was my purpose to ride to the house of my kinsman, the Earl of Cassillis. But, as I journeyed, what was my great affrightment to come upon a company of two, who rode some little way before me. I could easily have turned bridle-rein and ridden another way, but for something which came into my heart to make me follow on. For in a trice I recognised the riders to be John Mure and his son, the father being wrapped in his great cloak of grey, as is his custom. And by this I knew him.

'So I followed them, but not very near. And because my beast was a stable companion of their horses, he went after of his own accord – till, by the first breaking touch or morn we came to a waste place upon the edge of the sea, where in a secret dell I dismounted and tied my pony to a broom-bush which shot out over a sandy hollow.

'Then, yet more secretly, I followed them across the sandhills, and on the very edge on the links, where the turf ceases underfoot and there is only sand, John Mure and his son, this man before you, waited. For a while they stood listening and talking low together, so that, though I lay hidden behind a whin which overgrew a little turfy dell, I could neither hear what was said, nor yet by reason of the bareness of the sand, dared I to adventure nearer them. 'But they waited not long before one came down to meet them over the turf, bringing a lad with him. Then, immediately James Mure whistled a call, and the reply came back in like manner.

'"You are late, James Bannatyne," I heard John Mure the elder say; "what has taigled you?"

'"My sea cloth is not so well accustomed to night ploys as your cloak of grey!" the man growled as he came along sullenly enough.

'Then the three men of them walked a little apart, and came in their circuit very near to the hollow where I lay. While down on the shore the young lad stood and yawned, with his hands in his pockets, like one that shivers and wishes he were back in bed. Nor had he, I am confident, even then any thought of evil.

'But the talk of the three, as I heard it in snatches, was black and bitter.

'The darkest counsel was that of the man who stands here, for James Mure said only, "The dead are no tale-pyets." And again, "We have had enough of this silly, endless, hiding-and-seeking work. Let the earth hide him, or the sea keep him – and be done with it!"

'Now John Mure the elder, and the man whom they called James Bannatyne, seemed at the least inclined to discuss milder councils. Bannatyne was all for sending the lad over to Ireland. And John Mure listened as though he might be persuaded. Yet I knew his guile, for even when he stood with his back to his son, I saw him lift up his hand for a signal. And with that and no more, James Mure rushed at the poor lad and overbore him to the ground. And there upon the sands of the seashore, this James Mure set his knee on the bairnie's breast, and with bloody hands choked and worried him till there was no life left in the lad. And his father also went and held the lad when he fought, his white, reverend beard waggling in the wind, till at last the bairn lay still. But James Bannatyne stood by and clasped his hands, as the boy tossed and struggled for his dear young life, for I think he was now mainly sorry that he had brought the lad to his death.

'Then I could stand the vileness no longer without protest. So I, Marjorie Kennedy, even though I well knew that they would certainly do the like to me, rose from my hiding-place in the sand-hollow, and cried, "Murderers, cease from your cruel work. God will come and judge you!"

'Whereat John Mure came hastily to where I stood and gripped me. "You have seen all," he said, "then you must die. Let us see if God will come and help you!"

'So I defied them to do their worst with me, for madness had come upon me at the sight of the monstrous cruelty to an innocent bairn. And for the time I cared not what should become of myself.

'Then I called to James Bannatyne requiring of him to declare if he too were a murderer like the other fiends, and to call upon him to protect the innocent.

'"We will settle all that in the one payment, mistress," said John Mure to me.

'So by force I was compelled to abide with them, John Mure the elder taking me cruelly by the arm, while he sent the others to cast into the sea the dead body of the lad. But even so oft as they threw him in, so often the waves cast him out again upon the shore; and that though there was a strong wind off the land, which blew the tops from the waves and drave the sand in hissing streams into the sea.

'So when for the third time the boy had been tumbled upon the beach, John Mure bade Bannatyne bring his boat, saying that they would cast the loon afloat out in the deeps of the bay, so that the outerly wind might drive him to the coast of Ireland. After that they would return betimes to attend to other matters – by which I took him to mean that they would do that for me, which I had so lately seen them do for the young boy. And, indeed, I looked for no other mercy at their brutal hands. So in a little space James Bannatyne brought his boat, and with hard endeavour they launched her, and compelled me to accompany them. There was a strong wind from the east, and we were soon blown far out into the wild sea. There they cast the body of the lad overboard, and turned to make again for the shore. But though they all took oars and laboured in rowing, sames Bannatyne taking twain, they could make nothing of it; but were rather worse than they had been before they started.

'So they began to be afraid, and I was right glad thereat, for I looked that the doom of the twice guilty murderers should speedily come. And so the pain of this trial and my witnessing might have been spared.

'Now the Mures were the most fearful of the quick-risen storm, being as it were inland bred. It was all that James Bannatyne could get them to do to sit still.

'"Ye will wreck us all and send us red-hand before our Maker, with the lad's body not cold in the water, and his spirit there to meet us at the Judgment seat!" said he.

'And with that John Mure rose in his place, and in despite of the swaying and plunging of the ship, into which the water came lashing, he cried out, "The Wraith, the Wraith! It is following us – we are doomed!"'

'And lo! when I looked, I saw that which chilled me more than the whistling tempest. And if it feared me to the soul, judge ye what it must have been to the guilty men whose hands were yet red with the blood of the innocent.

'For there, not thirty yards behind the boat, and following strongly in our wake, as a stark swimmer might do, now tumbling and leaping in the wash of the seas and now lunging forward like a boat that is towed, was the murdered boy himself. And thus he followed with a smile on his face, or what looked like it in the uncertain light of the morning.

'So with that the men who rowed fell on their faces and could not look any more, though the prodigy followed us a good while. Only John Mure sat wrapped in his grey cloak steering the boat, and I sat beside him. Little by little we came to the land, but as it had been sideways, having been driven by the wind to the other side of the wide bay.

'There we disembarked and the Mures kept me close all that day in a place of strength on the seashore, till it was night. They plied me to promise silence, for they believed that I would keep my word if once I pledged it. They offered me all that they had of honour or place in the country. There was nothing, they said, that was not within the power of their compassing. For since the death of Gilbert of Bargany the King needed someone in Carrick strong enough to count spears with the Earl of Cassillis.

'But very steadfastly I withstood them, declaring that I should certainly reveal all their murder and treachery, both in the matter of the death of my lather, and in that which I had seen done upon the sands to the young lad William Dalrymple.

'So finally seeing that they could prevail nothing, they went out and kept silent watch by the door till the even. Then as soon as it was dark they opened the lock and bade me come forth. And this I did, knowing for a certainty that my last hour was come. Yet my life had not been so pleasant to me as to be very greatly precious. So I followed them with no very ill will, nor yet greatly concerned. Then on the craggy top they gave me, for the sake of their house and good name (as they said), one more chance to swear silence. This I would not accept, and they, being startled with the approach of a boat upon the water which steered towards our light, pinioned my arms, and thrusting something into my mouth, forthwith threw me over the cliff into the sea. And as to the mode of my rescuing and standing here before the Earl my cousin, young Launcelot Kennedy, my father's squire, can tell. And also my sister and Robert Mure of Maybole.'

CHAPTER XLV

THE MAN IN THE WIDE BREECHES

She ceased suddenly after this long account of her adventuring, and the folk stood still in amazement, having held their breath while she told of the killing of young William Dalrymple and of the Wraith. And then there arose a great cry from all the people, —

'Tear the murderer in pieces – kill him, kill him!' So that Cassillis had to summon men-at-arms to keep back that throng of furious folk, for the death of my master seemed to them but a little thing and venial, compared to the killing of a lad like William Dalrymple. And this was because the people of Carrick had been used all their days to family feuds and the expiation of blood by blood.

The Earl was about to call me up to give an account of my part in the affair, and I was preparing myself to make a good and creditable appearance – a thing which I have all my life studied to do – when there was heard a mighty crying in the rear of the Bailzie Court. Men cried 'He comes! He comes!' as though it had been some great one. And everybody turned their heads, to the no small annoyance of Earl John, who when on his Hill of Justice loved not that men should look in any other direction than his own.

The ranks of the men-at-arms opened, and there strode into the square of trial, which was guarded by the pennons of blue and gold at the four corners – who but John Mure of Auchendrayne himself, wearing the same cloak of grey and broad plumed hat which had been his wont when he went abroad upon dangerous quests! With him was another shorter man, whose face was for the time being almost hidden, for he had pulled the cloak he was wearing close about his mouth. He walked with an odd jolt or roll in his gait, and his breeches were exceedingly broad in the basement.

It was small wonder that we stood aghast at this sudden compearing of the arch criminal, whose misdeeds throughout all the countryside had filled the cup of his wickedness to the brim.

'Seize him!' cried the Earl, pointing directly at John Mure.

And his Bailzie's men took him roughly by the shoulders and set him beside his son. Then it was to be noticed, as the two stood together, that there was a great likeness between father and son. The elder man possessed the same features without any evident differences in outline. But so informed was his face with intelligence and power, that what was simply dull cruelty and loutishness in the one became the guile of statecraft in the other.

'Wherefore, my Lord Earl,' cried John Mure of Auchendrayne, 'is this violence done to me and to the heir of my house? I demand to know concerning what we are called in question and by whom?'

Then the Earl of Cassillis answered him, —

'John Mure of Auchendrayne, know then that you are charged, along with this your son, with the bloody murder of Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culzean, Tutor of Cassillis; and also with the cruel death of William Dalrymple, the young lad who brought you the message to your own house of Auchendrayne, telling at what hour the Tutor should pass the trysting place, where he was by you and yours foully assaulted and slain.'

'And who declares these things?' cried Mure, boldly, with a bearing more like that of an innocent man than that of any criminal that ever I saw.

The Earl bade us who had accused them so justly to stand forth. Then John Mure eyed us with a grave and amused contempt.

'My son's false wife, whom sorrow has caused to dote concerning her father's death – her night-raking rantipole sister, and her paramour, a loutish, land-louping squire – the Dominie of Maybole, a crippledick and piping merry-Andrew that travelled with them – these are the accusers of John Mure of Auchendrayne. They have seen, heard, noted what others have been ignorant of! Nay, rather, is it not clear that they have collogued together, conspiring to bear false witness against me and mine – for the sake of the frantic splenetic madness of her who is my son's fugitive wife, whose wrongs exist only in her own imaginings.'

'You have forgotten me!' said Robert Harburgh, quietly, stepping forward.

'I know you well,' said John Mure, 'and I would have remembered you had you been worth remembering. You are my Lord of Cassillis's squire and erstwhile a gay cock-sparrow ruffler, now married to the Grieve's daughter at Culzean.'

'Well,' said Harburgh, 'and what of that? Can a man not be all that and yet tell the truth?'

'That I leave to one who is greater, to judge,' said John Mure.

'And I do judge, John Mure,' cried the Earl, rising in his chair of state. 'I judge you to be a man rebel and mansworn, a traitor and a man-slayer. For a score of years ye have keeped all this realm of Carrick in a turmoil, you and they that have partaken with you in your evil deeds.'

'Loud, swelling words are but wind, my lord Earl of Cassillis,' answered Mure of Auchendrayne, a dry smile of contempt coming over his features.

'Now I will show thee, bold ill-doer,' said the Earl, fiercely, 'whether I speak the words of a dotard or no. Forward, men, take him up and bind him. Methinks we have yet engines within the castle of Dunure that can make him declare the rights of this murderous treason!'

Then I rejoiced, not for the torture of our enemy, but because at last the Earl saw fully with our eyes, and would right us against the cruel oppressor of Marjorie Kennedy, and for the murder of my gentle and courteous master.

But ere the men could carry out the orders of the Earl, the broad-breeched man who had accompanied Auchendrayne, and who had all the while stood still and watchful, dropped his plaid, which like a mask he had held beneath his eyes. He was a middle-sized, fleshy man, with no great dignity of face, and with a weak mouth that dribbled perpetually at the side as if the tongue were too large for it. He wore a slashed doublet very full at the sleeves, baggy trunks, and a sword in a plain scabbard hanging at his side. I saw nothing further very particular about the man save the shambling inward bend of his knees. But it was with dumb amaze that the Earl looked at him, standing there arrested in the act of pointing with his hand at John Mure. He stood with his jaw fallen, and his eyes starting from his head.

'The King! the King!' he muttered in astonishment, looking about him like one distracted.

'Ay, Baron Bailzie of Carrick, even your King,' said the man in the wide trunk hosen, 'come to see how his sometime High Treasurer of Scotland executes just judgment in his own regality!'

The Earl came quickly to himself, and he and all the people took off their hats. He stepped down and made his obeisance to the King, bending humbly upon his knee. Then he ushered the King to the throne whereon he himself had been sitting, and took a lower seat beside Adam Boyd of Penkill, his assessor in ordinary.

The King rose to speak.

'My Lord Earl and gentlemen of Carrick,' he said, with dignity enough, but with a thick and rolling accent as if his tongue had been indeed too big, 'I know this case to the bottom. I am fully persuaded of the innocence of our trusty councillor, John Mure of Auchendrayne – who is besides of the fraternity of learned men, and one that hath a history of this realm in script ready for the printers, wherein he does full justice both to myself and to my noble predecessors. He hath, as I should nominate it, an exactness of expression and a perspicuity of argument that have never been matched in the land. I propose shortly to make him my historiographer royal. Also I, the King, do know him to be a man well affected to the right ecclesiastical ruling of this kingdom, and minded to help me with the due ordering of it.'

The King puffed and blew after his speech, and we and all that were there stood silent, for to most of us he might as well have spoken in the Hebrew of which he boasted himself so great a master. Then he went on: —

'I have left my Lord Mar and my retinue some way in the rear. For we go to hunt the deer in whatever forest the goodwill of our loyal subjects may put at our disposal.'

'You are right welcome, my liege,' said the Earl John, starting up and standing bareheaded, 'to my hunting lodges and retinue, both in the Forest of Buchan and also at my house of Cassillis.'

The King bent towards him royally, for James the Sixth had manners when he liked to show them – which, in truth, was not always.

'I thank you, trusty councillor,' said he; 'it is nobly and generously done – qualities which also marked your all-too-brief tenure of the office of High Treasurer of Scotland. But for the judging of this our worthy subject, I propose to take that upon myself, being wholly persuaded of his innocence. And as for those that have falsely accused him, let the men underlie my will in the prison most convenient, and the women be warded meantime in their own house and castle, till I cause to be known my whole pleasure in the matter.'

We stood aghast, and knew not what to say, so completely had Auchendrayne turned our flank with the King. Not a word had we found to allege when the officers of the court, to whom the charge was given, came to put the iron rings on our wrists and march us off, even as we had hoped and expected to see Auchendrayne and his son taken.

And as the Dominie and I were haled away we could see Auchendrayne bending suavely over the King's high seat, and His Majesty inclining to him and talking privately back and forth, with many becks and uncouth graces such as he had used in his address to the Earl and his people.

'He is the very devil himself,' said the Dominie, meaning Auchendrayne and not the King; 'he hath not halted to cozen the greatest man in this realm with his lying tongue!'

But I said nothing, for what had I to say? I had seen lands, honours, love, and consideration vanish at a stroke.

CHAPTER XLVI

THE JUDGMENT OF GOD

The court of the Baron Bailzie of Carrick broke up in confusion. It had been arranged that we should ride all together to the north, even to Culzean, where His Majesty might have due entertainment provided for him nearer than at my lord's castle of Cassillis. Also it was upon this shoreside road that he had left the Earl of Mar and the favourite attendants with whom James the Sixth ordinarily sallied forth to the hunting.

Those of the Auchendrayne and Bargany party who hated us, clamoured that the Dominie and I should be left warded in the lock-fast place of Girvan, where our enemies would soon have ta'en their will of us. But Robert Harburgh moved my lord, who went about dour and heartsick for the failure of his plans in the matter of the Mures, to have us brought on, with purpose to lodge us within the ancient strengths of Dunure.

So that as I rode hand-tied at the tail of the King's retinue, I was yet near enough to have sight of Marjorie and Nell who rode before us. And this was some comfort to my heart.

The way lay for miles along the seashore, which is here sandy, with a broad belt of fine hard beach whereon the horses went daintily and well, while at our left elbows the sea murmured.

The King and John Mure rode first, and His Majesty constantly broke into loud mirth at some witty saying of his companion's. Level with them, but riding moodily apart, was the Earl, while James Mure the younger rode alone by himself behind these three.

I groaned within me for the exaltation of our enemy and at the shortsightedness of anointed kings.

'Is there a God in heaven,' I cried aloud, 'thus to make no sign, while the devil is driving all things headlong to destruction according to his own devising?'

There was a God in heaven.

For, quick as an echo that answers from the wood, there before us upon the sands, just where the levels had been overflowed at the last tide, lay a thing which halted the advancing cavalcade as suddenly as an army with banners. The men crowded about, and, having in the excitement forgotten us their charges, we also were permitted to look. And this is what we saw.

There upon the ribbed sea sand lay the dead body of the boy William Dalrymple. I knew him at a glance, for all that so much had come and gone since that day when I played at the golf game upon the green of Maybole. He lay with his arms stretched away from his sides, his face turned over, and one cheek dented deeply into the sand. It was a pitiful sight. Yet the lad was not greatly altered – wind-tossed and wave-borne as he had been, and now brought to cross the path of the unjust at the very nick of time, by the manifest judgment and providence of God.

'What means this?' said the King. 'Some poor drowned sailor boy. Let us avoid!' For of all things he loved not gruesome sights nor the colour of blood. But James Mure suddenly cried aloud at the vision, as if he had been stricken with pain. And as he did so, his father looked at him as though he would have slain him, so devilish was his glance of hate and contempt.

But a woman who had come running hot-foot after the party, now rushed to the front. She gave a loud scream, ear-piercing and frantic, when she saw the tossed little body lying all abroad upon the sand.