Maid Margaret of Galloway

These papers were found among the archives of Philip Herault de Douglas, erewhile Lord of Cour Cheverney in Touraine, and Montreal, not far from Nantua in the Bugey. They have,...

Oh, I was so tired--so weary. I could hear my jaw crack at the corners where the strings are, each time I yawned. And not without reason. For I was nearly eighteen and had been...

For, after all, Laurence was a good deal older than I. And that makes a difference. Besides, he had known me from the time that Maud Lindsay sent me off to play with him, that s...

So to Cour Cheverney we went, the fat-faced goodman with the pouting lips and the unsteady Florentine eyes leading the way. The fields, how fine they smelt--hawthorn, red and wh...

Now, ever since I could run alone I have always tried to find out everything for myself, and to put my spoon into every dish the like of which I had never seen before. So, havin...

Ah, these days at Cour Cheverney! How I loved the valley of the Loire and the little feeding rivers which would have been great ones anywhere else, but which shrank to brooklets...

Until one day by the little brook which they call the river of Cheverney, William Douglas had never spoken to me of our marriage. But ere we were set out from the castle I knew...

Well, at any rate, that was over. I knew what I had to expect. William had said that he loved me. It was possible. Nevertheless, the signs were lacking--all, at least, that I ca...

At that I was wroth, and with reason. For who could have dreamed of such a thing--except, as I said, one blinded by monkish ignorance or childish jealousy? Yes, I was very angry...

It was the Dauphin who conducted us to Amboise--why, I did not at the time know. And such a way as it proved from Cour Cheverney, past telling of--all along the green river bank...

“She is the queen’s ward, her favourite, and has given much good counsel to the king in matters concerning which the queen is incapable,” said James calmly, “specially, that is,...

I confess it was with a marvellous gladness that I saw our ancient castle of Thrieve stand up out of the morning mists, as we rode up Deeside from the little port of Kirkcudbrig...

It was not long before I had made my case plain to Maud Lindsay. All my infancy and childhood she had been my companion. In the time of De Retz, she and I had been shut up in th...

That month fled all too fast away. Never had there been known a more perfect July. The scarlet poppies overleaped the corn already yellowing on the sandier knowes. Deep and lush...

The days went by all too quickly. The preparations for the wedding itself were begun. Pavilions with silken cords and rich broideries of cloth of gold, brought from France, were...

For a moment we stood there gazing at each other--thus. William Douglas was bareheaded, looking, as I remember, in his dress of black, simple as any squire. Yet in spite of all,...

It was done, and as to that there was an end. I was left alone, at once a wife and a maid--the wife of William Douglas and the betrothed of James, his brother, with the full kno...

It was with some anticipation, but still more, I think, with that exultation which comes from swift movement in the open air, that Maud and I started to ride the half-league whi...

There still remained to me to make the acquaintance of the sole daughter of Malise M‘Kim, the sister of Sholto and Laurence. She was not yet sixteen years of age, but already he...

I was resolved that no longer would I miss my mark. So that very afternoon I sent Andro the Penman, whose swarthy countenance and determinate bachelordom protected him from any...

It becomes not me to write of the doings of William Douglas--of how he began to realise his ideal, by taking the king out of the hands of Crichton and Livingston, of his being m...

So one September gloaming--still and gracious it was, I mind it yet--William Douglas and I sat together on the low seat by the window of my chamber. He had brought me stuff of P...

The days went by at Thrieve--some few, like my Arab, galloping; most like a funeral train, as is the wont of days all over the world. Some the pigeons in the court would shorten...

I looked up and saw Maud stand in the doorway, left open by the tumultuous entrance of my husband. She held back the tapestry with her hand. No Numidian lioness at the entrance...

They brought me word. It was Laurence who came. James had sent him--not, I think, knowing--or perhaps, in his insolence of security, not caring. And what it was, I must strive t...

A girl confined for years in a great house, eager of heart, rebellious against binding and prisoning Fate, seeing all about her the sort of happiness her heart craved--the very...

And truly the matter came about even as James Douglas had said. The pope granted the dispensation for us to be married, backed as the request was by the name of the King of Scot...

It was early borne in upon me that James Douglas would not long make any woman happy--no, nor yet any people over whom he might bear rule. He was that most insidious of self-dec...

Sholto stood with his hand on the old man’s arm. Maud sat still-stricken in the window corner. The younger lads read their father’s face with a kind of awe. Only Sholto was mast...

We were still at Thrieve. The woods were yet one manifest emerald. Only the birds began to take up again their later after-summer song. It was a fair place. But--how shall I des...

Long, long it was that I lay tossing in fever or shaking in chill, till one day I came forth feeble and white, the very shadow of myself. And during these weeks and months many...

It was on an evening mild and sweet as only (and rarely) late June affords, that Sholto and Maud had taken me out through the great gate of Thrieve, a little way across the isle...

Ay, truly, it was James Douglas, all incarnadine with the blood of battle, his own and that which his right arm had shed. His splintered sword was glued to his hand, the finely...

“No--I bid you not to touch me, Margaret. Not now--I am not worthy. I am a man of fibre too coarse for you or any woman like you. Maud Lindsay there should draw aside from me he...

“After that we chaunted no more wild songs, but lay still all the night till the greying of the day. Once we heard, as it were, the sound of a great voice on the heights cursing...

It is not, of course, to be supposed that a man so grievously wounded as James Douglas could at one time, and without repose, deliver himself of a narrative so prolonged and cir...

It seemed strange that after these things we yet lived--yea, and breakfasted, and dined, and supped. It was as if we had within the castle of Thrieve one dead. Up in the chamber...

This is the written story of the Young Man in Black to whom the king (chiefly because he desired to cross-buttock his sometime favourites, in order that he might show them that...

Never was Scottish siege so picturesque as this all in the broad summer weather--the wide, pleasant strath of Dee glowing under the August sun, and the knights of the king’s cou...

In the smithy of the Three Thorns, Malise M‘Kim drew his sons together. It was the morning after his interview with the king, very early. All night the old man had walked about...

Every morn Maud and I went up to the roof to see the muster of the king’s troops, which was like a pageant. There were trumpets that blew, and banners that waved, and knights an...

Nevertheless, Sholto kept a diligent watch on those things which needed to be done before the great cannon could fire its first shot. There were no iron or leaden bullets which...

Then came the day, memorable and terrible beyond words, the day of the final breaching. It was on a Wednesday that the great gun was first fired. It took Laurence M‘Kim and his...

Sholto stood in the breach, waiting. Never soldier about to die looked his enemy more steadily in the face. I think, if my babe had lived, he would have been a soldier like Shol...

As to us who were confined in Archibald the Grim, these events passed literally over our heads, and left us no whit the wiser. Indeed, till the door of our prison-house was open...

Now the life at Stirling grew not to be long-time endured by me. The chamber where the blow was stricken, the yard where the dead lay buried, the vaunting courtiers, the painted...

At last there came for me a certain glad day when the ploughs on all the open straths were blithely upturning the fallow, and the whole world was filled with the swirling of whi...

It was on the third day of the stay of Malise the smith at the house of the Larg of Kenmore that there came a message from the king, at Stirling, commanding with all urgence the...

Well, after a time and a time Laurence and I went back to the Larg together, for the present determined to say naught about the matter, till I should have gone with my letter an...

Accordingly I betook me to Bishop Kennedy, who was at Edinburgh Castle, having wholly supplanted Crichton with the king. A kindly, pawky, common-looking man he was, most like a...

Right royally arrayed was the king’s camp before Roxburgh, the last English strength left untaken within his realm. To me it was a wondrous sight. For hitherto I had seen only t...

I am an old woman, and wearied with much writing; yet, like any young girl, I have my dreams of love, and may be permitted to tell them. Late have I sat, and long; early have I...