The Scottish Chiefs Part 60

Wallace recapitulated his reasons for having refrained from forcing the obedience of the young Lord Badenoch and his adherents; for abdicating a dignity he could no longer maintain without shedding the blood of the misguided men who opposed him. Bruce acknowledged the wisdom of this conduct, but could not restrain his animadversions on the characters of the c.u.mmins. He told Wallace that he had met the two sons of the late Lord Badenoch in Guienne; that James, who now pretended such resentment of his father's death, had ever been a rebellious son. John, who yet remained in France, appeared of a less violent temper; "but," added the prince, "I have been taught by one who will never counsel me more, that all the c.u.mmins, male and female, would be ready at any time to sacrifice earth and heaven to their ambition. It is to Buchan and Athol that I owe my prolonged confinement, and to them I may date the premature death of my father."

The start of Wallace declared his shock at this information. "How?"

exclaimed he, "The Earl of Carrick dead? Fell, fell a.s.sa.s.sins of their country!" The swelling emotions of his soul would not allow him to proceed, and Bruce resumed: "It is for him I wear these sable garments--poor emblems of the mournings of my soul, mournings, not so much for his loss (and that is grievous as ever son bore), but because he lived not to let the world know what he really was; he lived not to bring into light his long-obscured honor! There, there, Wallace, is the bitterness of this cup to me!"

"But can you not sweeten it, my dear prince," cried Wallace, "by retrieving all that he was cut off from redeeming? To open the way to you I come."

"And I will enter where you point," returned Bruce; "but heavy is my woe that, knowing the same spirit was in my father's bosom, he should be torn from the opportunity to make it manifest. Oh, Wallace! that he should be made to lie down in a dishonored grave! Had he lived, my friend, he would have brightened that name which rumor has sullied, and I should have doubly gloried in wearing the name he had rendered so worthy of being coupled with the kingly t.i.tle. n.o.ble was he in soul; but he fell amidst a race of men whose art was equal to their venality, and he became their dupe. Betrayed by friends.h.i.+p, he sunk into the snare; for he had no dishonor in his own breast to warn him of what might be the villainy of others. He believed the cajoling speeches of Edward, who, on the first offense of Baliol, had promised to place my father on the throne. Month after month pa.s.sed away, and the engagement was unperformed. The disturbance on the Continent seemed to his confiding nature a sufficient excuse for these various delays; and he waited in quiet expectation till your name, my friend, rose glorious in Scotland. My father and myself were then in Guienne; Edward persuaded him that you affected the crown; and he returned with that deceiver to draw his sword against his people and their ambitious idol--for so he believed you to be; and grievous has been the expiation of that fatal hour! Your conference with him on the banks of the Carron opened his eyes; he saw what his credulity had made Scotland suffer; what a wreck he had made of his own fame; and from that moment he resolved to follow another course. But the habit of trusting the affection of Edward inclined him rather to remonstrate on his rights than immediately to take up arms against him; yet, resolved not to strike a second blow on his people, when you a.s.sailed the Southron camp he withdrew his few remaining followers, who had survived the hard-fought day of Falkirk, into a remote defile. On quitting you, I came up with him in Mid=Lothian; and never having missed me from the camp, he concluded that I had appeared thus late from having kept in the rear of the division."

Bruce now proceeded to narrate to Wallace the particulars of his father's meeting with the king at Durham. Instead of that monarch receiving the Earl of Carrick with his wonted familiar welcome, he turned coldly from him when he approached, and suffered him to take his usual seat at the royal table without deigning him the slightest notice. Young Bruce was absent from the banquet, having determined never to mingle again in social communion with the man whom he now regarded as the usurper of his father's rights. The absence of the filial eye which had once looked the insolent Buchan into his inherent insignificance, now emboldened the audacity of this enemy of the house of Carrick; and, supported by Athol on the one side, and Soulis on the other, the base voluptuary seized a pause in the conversation (that he might draw the attention of all present to the disgrace of the chief), and said, with affected carelessness, "My Lord of Carrick, to-day you dine with clean hands; the last time, I saw you at meat, they were garnished with your own blood!" The earl turned on him a look which asked him to explain. Lord Buchan laughed, and continued, "When we last met at table, was it not in his majesty's tent after the victory at Falkirk? You were then red from the slaughter of those b.a.s.t.a.r.dized people to whom I understand you now give the fond appellation of sons.

Having recognized the relations.h.i.+p, it was not probable we should again see your hands in their former brave livery; and their present pallid hue convinces more than myself, of the truth of our information."

"And me," cried Edward, rising on the couch to which his wounds confined him, "that I have discovered a traitor! You fled, Lord Carrick, at the first attack which the Scots made on my camp, and you drew thousands after you. I know you too well to believe that cowardice impelled the motion. It was treachery, accursed treachery to your friend and king; and you shall feel the weight of his resentment!"

"To this hour, Kind Edward," replied the earl, starting from his chair, "I have been more faithful to you than to my country or my G.o.d! I heard, saw, and believed, only what you determined; and I became your slave, your vile, oppressed slave! the victim of your artifice! How often have you pledged yourself that you fought in Scotland only for my advantage! I gave my faith and my power to you; and how often have you promised, after the next successful battle, to restore me to the crown of my ancestors! I still believed you, and I still engaged all who yet acknowledged the influence of Bruce, to support your name in Scotland.

Was not such the reiterated promise by which you allured me to the field of Falkirk? And when I had covered myself, as Lord Buchan too truly says, with the blood of my children; when I asked my friend for the crown I had served for, what was his answer? 'Have I naught to do but to win kingdoms to make gifts of?' Thus, then, did a king, a friend, break his often-repreated word! What wonder, then, that I should feel the indignation of a prince and a friend; and leave the false, alas! the perjured, to defenders whom he seemed more highly to approve? But of treachery, what have I shown? Rather confidence, King Edward; and the confidence that was awakened in the fields of Palestine brought me hither to-day to remonstrate with you on my rights; when by throwing myself into the arms of my people, I might have demanded them at the head of a victorious army."

Edward, who had prepared by the c.u.mmins to discredit all that Carrick might say in his defense, turned with a look of contempt toward him, and said, "You have persuaded to act like a madman, and as maniacs both yourself and your son shall be guarded till I have leisure to consider any rational evidence you may in future offer in your vindication."

"And is this the manner, King Edward, that you treat your friend, once your preserver?"

"The va.s.sal," replied Edward, "who presumes upon the condescension of his prince, and acts as if he were really his equal, ought to meet the punishment due to such arrogance. You saved my life on the walls of Acre; but you owed that duty to the son of your liege lord. In the fervor of youth I inconsiderately rewarded you with my friends.h.i.+p, and the return is treason." As he concluded he turned from Lord Carrick; and the marshals immediately seizing the earl, took him to the keep of the castle.**

**These speeches are historically true; as is also Edward's after-treatment of the Earl of Carrick.

His son, who had been sought in the Carrick quarters, and laid under an arrest, met his father in the guard-chamber. Carrick could not speak; but motioning to be conducted to the place appointed for his prison, the men with equal silence led him through a range of apartments which occupied the middle story, and stopping in the furthest, left him there with his son. Bruce was not surprised at his own arrest; but at that of his father, he stood in speechless astonishment until the guards withdrew; then, seeing Lord Carrick with a changing countenance throw himself on the bed (for it was in his sleeping room they had left him), he exclaimed, "What is the meaning of this, my father? Has any charge against me brought suspicion on you?"

"No, Robert, no," replied the earl; "it is I who have brought you into this prison, and into disgrace; disgrace with all the world, for having tacitly surrendered my inheritance to the invader of my country.

Honest men abhor, villains treat me with contumely; and he for whom I incurred all this, because I would not, when my eyes were open to my sin, again imbrue my hands in the blood of my country, now thrusts me from him! You are implicated in my crime; and for not joining the Southrons to repel the Scots from the royal camp, we are both prisoners!"

"Then," replied Bruce, "he shall feel that you have a son who has virtue to be what he suspects; and from this hour I proclaim eternal enmity to the betrayer of my father; to the ingrate who embraced you to destroy!"

The indignation of the youthful prince wrought him to so vehement a declaration of resolute and immediate hostility, that Lord Carrick was obliged to give his transports way; but when he saw that his denunciations were exhausted, though not the determined purpose of his soul (for he trod the room with a step which seemed to shake its foundations, with the power of his mighty mind), Carrick gazed on him with pride, yet grief, and sighing heavily called him to approach him.

"Come to me, my Robert!" said he, "hear and abide by the last injunctions of your father, for from this bed I may never rise more. A too late sense of the injuries my sanction has doubled on the people I was born to protect, and the ingrat.i.tude of him for whom I have offended my G.o.d and wronged my country, have broken my heart. I shall die, Robert, but you will avenge me!"

"May G.o.d so prosper me!" cried Bruce, raising his arms to heaven.

Carrick resumed:

"Attend to me, my dear and brave son, and do not mistake the nature of my last wish. Do not allow the perhaps too forcible word I have used, to hurry you into any personal revenge on Edward. Let him live to feel and to regret the outrages he has committed on the peace and honor of his too faithful friend. Pierce him on the side of his ambition, there he is vulnerable, and there you will heal while you wound. This would be my revenge, dear Robert, that you should one day have his life in your power, and in memory of what I now say, spare it. When I am gone, think not of private resentment. Let your aim be the recovery of the kingdom, which Edward rifled from your fathers. Join the virtuous and triumphant Wallace. Tell him of my remorse, of my fate, and be guided wholly by his counsels. To insure the success of this enterprise, my son--a success to which I look as to the only means of redeeming the name I have lost, and of inspiring my separated spirit with courage to meet the freeborn souls of my ancestors--urge not your own destruction by any premature disclosure of your resolutions. For my sake and for your country's, suppress your resentment, threaten not the King of England, provoke not the unworthy Scottish lords who have gained his ear; but bury all in your own bosom till you can join Wallace. Then, by his arm, and your own, seat yourself firmly on the throne of your fathers. That moment will sufficiently avenge me on Edward!--and in that moment, Robert! or at least as soon as circ.u.mstances can allow, let the English ground which will then hold my body, give up its dead!

Remove me to a Scottish grave, and, standing over my ashes, proclaim to them who might have been my people, that for every evil I suffered to fall on Scotland, I have since felt answering pangs, and that dying, I beg their forgiveness, and bequeath them my best blessing--my virtuous son, to reign in my stead!"

These injunctions to a.s.sert his own honor and that of his father, were readily sworn to by Bruce; but he could not so easily be made to quell the imperious indignation which was precipitating him to an immediate and loud revenge. The dying earl trembled before the overwhelming pa.s.sion of his son's wrath and grief. Treated with outrage and contumely, he saw his father stricken to the earth before him, and he could not bear to hear any temporizing with his murderers. But all this tempest of the soul the wisdom-inspired arguments of the earl at last becalmed, but could not subdue. He convinced his son's reason by showing him that caution would insure the blow, and that his aim could only be effected by remaining silent till he could publish his father's honor, evidenced by his own heroism. "Do this," added Carrick, "and I shall live fair in the memories of men. But be violent, threaten Edward from these walls, menace the wretches who have trodden on the gray hairs of their prince, and your voice will be heard no more; this ground will drink your blood, and blindly judging infamy will forever after point to our obscure graves!"

Such persuasives at last prevailed with Bruce, and next day, writing the hasty lines which Wallace received at Falkirk, he intrusted them to his senachie, who conveyed them to Scotland by means of the shepherd youth.

Shortly after the dispatch of this letter, the presage of Lord Carrick was verified; he was seized in the night with spasms, and died in the arms of his son.

When Bruce related these particulars, his grief and indignation became so violent, that Wallace was obliged to enforce the dying injunctions of the father he thus vehemently deplored, to moderate the delirium of his soul. "Ah!" exclaimed the young earl, "I have indeed needed some friend to save me from myself, some one to reconcile me to the Robert Bruce who had so long slept in the fatal delusions which poisoned his father and laid him low! Oh! Wallace! at times I am mad. I know not whether this forbearance be not cowardice. I doubt whether my father meant what he spoke, that he did not yet seek to preserve the life of his son at the expense of his honor, and I have been ready to precipitate myself on the steel of Edward, so that he should but meet the point of mine!"

Bruce then added, that in his more rational meditations, he had resolved to attempt an escape in the course of a few days. He understood that a deputation of English barons, seeking a ratification of their charter, were soon to arrive in Durham; the bustle attendant on their business would, he hoped, draw attention from him, and afford him the opportunity he sought. "In that case," continued he, "I should have made directly to Stirling, and had not Providence conducted you to me, I might have unconsciously thrown myself into the midst of enemies.

James c.u.mmin is too ambitious to have allowed my life to pa.s.s unattempted."

Whilst he was yet speaking, the door of the chamber burst open, and Bruce's two attendants rushed into the room with looks aghast. Bruce and Wallace started on their feet and laid their hands on their swords.

But instead of anything hostile appearing behind the servants, the inebriated figure of the senachie staggered forward. The men, hardly awake, stood staring and trembling, and looking from the senachie to Wallace; at last one, extricating his terror-struck tongue, and falling on his knees, exclaimed: "Blessed St. Andrew! here is the senachie and his wraith." Bruce perceived the mistake of his servants, and explaining to them that a traveling minstrel had obliged the senachie by performing his duty, he bade them retire to rest, and think no more of their alarm. The intoxicated bard threw himself without ceremony on his pallet in the recess, and the servants, though convinced, still shaking with superst.i.tious fright, entreated permission to bring their heather beds into their lord's chamber. To deny them was impossible, and all further converse with Wallace that night being put an end to, a couch was laid for him in an interior apartment, and with a grateful pressure of the hands, in which their hearts silently embraced, the chiefs separated to repose.

Chapter LVIII.

The Bishop's Palace.

The second matin bell sounded from the abbey before the eyes of Wallace opened from the deep sleep which had sealed them. A bath refreshed him from every toil, then renewing the stain on his face and hands with the juice of a nut which he carried about him, and once more covering his martial figure and golden hair with the minstrel's ca.s.sock and cowl, he rejoined his friend.

Bruce had previously affected to consider the senachie as still disordered by his last night's excess, and ordering him from his presence for at least a day, commanded that the traveling minstrel should be summoned to supply his place.

The table was spread when Wallace entered, and several servants were in attendance. Bruce hastily rose and would have embraced him, so did his comforted heart spring to meet his friend; but before these people it would have been more than imprudent, and hailing him with only one of his love-beaming looks, he made a sign to him to take his place at a board near his own. To prevent suspicioin in the attendants (some of whom might be spies of Edward's), during the repast he discoursed with Wallace on subjects relative to northern literature, repeating many pa.s.sages apposite to his own heroic sentiments, from Ossian and other Scottish bards.

The meal finished, Wallace, to maintain his a.s.sumed character while the servants were removing the table, was tuning his harp when the Earl of Gloucester entered the room. The earl told Bruce the king had required the attendance of the border minstrel, and that after searching over the castle, the royal seneschal had at last discovered he was in the keep with him. On this being intimated to Gloucester, he chose rather to come himself to demand the harper from his friend, than to subject him to the insolence of the royal servants. The king desired to hear "The Triumph," with which the minstrel had so much pleased the queen.

Bruce turned pale at this message; and was opening his mouth to utter a denial, when Wallace, who read in his countenance what he was going to say, and aware of the consequences, immediately spoke:

"If my lord Bruce will grant permission, I should wish to comply with the King of England's request."

"Minstrel!" replied Bruce, casting on him a powerful expression of what was pa.s.sing in his mind, "you know not, perhaps that the King of England is at enmity with me, and cannot mean well to any one who has been my guest, or servant! The Earl of Gloucester will excuse your attendance in the presence."

"Not for my life or the minstrel's!" replied the earl; "the king would suspect some mystery, and this innocent man might fall into peril. But as it is, his majesty merely wishes to hear him play and sing, and I pledge myself he shall return in safety."

Further opposition would only have courted danger, and with as good a grace as he could a.s.sume, Bruce gave his consent. A page who followed Gloucester took up the harp, and with a glance at his friend, which spoke the fearless mind with which he ventured into the power of his enemy, Wallace accompanied Gloucester out of the room.

The earl moved swiftly forward, and leading him through a double line of guards, the folding-doors of the royal apartment were thrown open by two knights in waiting, and Wallace found himself in the royal presence. Perforated with wounds which the chief's own hand had given him, the king lay upon a couch overhung with a crimson-velvet canopy, with long golden fringes which swept the floor. His crown stood on a cus.h.i.+on at his head, and his queen, the blooming Margaret of France, sat full of smiles at his feet. The young Countess of Gloucester occupied a seat by her side.

The countess, who from indisposition had not been at court the preceding day, fixed her eyes on the minstrel as he advanced into the middle of the room, where the page, by Gloucester's orders, planted the harp. She observed the manner of his obeisance to the king and queen, and to herself, and the queen whispering her with a smile, said, while he was taking his station at the harp, "Have your British troubadours usually such an air as that? Am I right, or am I wrong?"

"Quite right," replied the countess in as low a voice; "I suppose he has sung of kings and heroes till he cannot help a.s.suming their step and demeanor!"

"But how did he come by those eyes?" answered the queen. "If singing of Reuther's 'beamy gaze' have so richly endowed his own, by getting him to teach me his art, I may warble myself into a complexion as fair as any northern beauty!"

"But then his must not be the subject of your song," whispered the countess with a laugh, "for methinks it is rather of the Ethiop hue!"

During this short dialogue, which was heard by none but the two ladies, Edward was speaking with Gloucester, and Wallace leaned upon his harp.

"That is enough," said the king to his son-in-law; "now let me hear him play."

The earl gave the word, and Wallace, striking the chords with the master hand of genius, called forth such strains and uttered such tones from his full and richly-modulated voice, that the king listened with wonder, and the queen and countess scarcely allowed themselves to breathe. He sung the parting of Reuther and his bride, and their souls seemed to pant upon his notes; he changed his measure, and their bosoms heaved with the enthusiasm which spoke from his lips and hand, for he urged the hero to battle, he described the conflict, he mourned the slain, he sung the glorious triumph; as the last sweep of the harp rolled its lofty diapason on the ear of the king, the monarch deigned to p.r.o.nounce him unequaled in his art. Excess of delight so agitated the more delicate frames of the ladies, that while they poured their encomiums on the minstrel, they wiped the glistening tears form their cheeks. The queen approached him, laid her hand upon the harp, and touching the strings with a light finger, said with a sweet smile, "You must remain with the king's musicians, and teach me how to charm as you do!" Wallace replied to this innocent speech with a smile sweet as her own, and bowed.

The countess drew near. Though not much older than the youthful queen, she had been married twice, and being therefore more acquainted with the proprieties of life, her compliments were uttered in a form more befitting her rank, and the supposed quality of the man to whom the queen continued to pour forth her less considerate praises.

Edward desired Gloucester to bring the minstrel closer to him. Wallace approached the royal couch. Edward looked at him from head to foot before he spoke. Wallace bore his eagle gaze with an undisturbed countenance; he neither withdrew his eye from the king, nor did he allow a conqueror's fire to emit from its glance.