The Scottish Chiefs Part 88

In that suspension of the soul, when Bothwell knelt on one side of the bier and Ruthven bent his knee on the other, Bruce stretched out his hand to the weeping Isabella; "Come hither, my youthful bride, and let thy first duty be paid to the shrine of thy benefactor and mine! So may we live, sweet excellence; and so may we die, if the like may be our meed of heavenly glory!"

Isabella threw herself into his arms and wept aloud. Helen, slowly raising her head at these words, regarded her sister with a look of awful tenderness, then turning her eyes back upon the coffin, gazed on it as if they would have pierced its confines, and clasping the urn earnestly to her heart, she exclaimed, "'Tis come! the promise--Thy bridal bed shall be William Wallace's grave!"

Bruce and Isabella, not aware that she repeated words which Wallace had said to her, turned to her with portentous emotion. She understood the terrified glance of her sister, and with a smile which bespoke her kindred to the soul she was panting to rejoin, she answered, "I speak of my own espousals. But ere that moment is--and I feel it near--let my Wallace's hallowed presence bless your nuptials! Thou wilt breathe thy benediction through my lips," added she, laying her hand on the coffin, and looking down on it as if she were conversing with its inhabitant.

"O, no, no," returned Isabella, throwing herself on her knees before the almost unembodied aspect of her sister; "let me ever be the sharer of your cell, or take me with you to the kingdom of Heaven!"

"It is thy sister's spirit that speaks," cried Dunkeld, observing the awe which not only shook the tender frame of Isabella, but had communicated itself to Bruce, who stood in heart-struck veneration before the yet unascended angel, "holy inspiration," continued the bishop, "beams from her eyes, and as ye hope for further blessings, obey its dictates!"

Isabella bowed her head in acquiescence. As Bruce approached to take his part in the sacred rite, he raised the hand which lay on the pall to his lips. The ceremony began--was finished! As the bridal notes resounded from the organ, and the royal pair rose from their knees, Helen held her trembling hands over them. She gasped for breath, and would have sunk without a word, had not Bothwell supported her shadowy form upon his breast. She looked round on him with a grateful though languid smile, and with a strong effort spoke:

"Be you blessed in all things as Wallace would have blessed you! From his side I pour out my soul upon you, my sister--my being--and, with its inward-breathed prayers to the Giver of all good for your eternal happiness, I turn, in holy faith--to my long looked-for rest!"

Bruce and Isabella wept in each other's arms. Helen slid gently from the boom of Bothwell prostrate on the coffin, and uttering, in a low tone:

"I waited only for this! We have met--I unite thy n.o.ble heart to thee again--I claim my brother--at our Father's hands--in mercy!--in love--by his all-blessed Son!"

Her voice gradually faded away as she murmured these broken sentences, which none but the close and attentive ear of Bothwell heard. But he caught not the triumphant exclamation of her soul, which spoke, though her lips ceased to move, and cried to the attending angels:

"Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?"

In this awful moment the Abbot of Inchaffray, believing the dying saint was prostrate in prayer, laid his hand on the iron box, which stood at the foot of Wallace's bier. "Before the sacred remains of the once champion of Scotland, and in the presence of his royal successor,"

exclaimed the abbot, "let this mysterious coffer of St. Fillan's be opened, to reward the deliverer of Scotland, according to its intent!"

"If it were to contain the relics of St. Fillan himself," returned the king, "they could not meet a holier bosom than this!" and resting the box on the coffin, he unclasped the lock, and the regalia of Scotland was discovered! At this sight, Bruce exclaimed, in an agony of grateful emotion, "Thus did this truest of human beings protect my rights, even while the people I had deserted, and whom he had saved, knelt to him to wear them all!"

"And thus Wallace crowns thee!" said Dunkeld, taking the diadem from its coffer, and setting it on Bruce's head.

"My husband, and my king!" gently exclaimed Isabella, sinking on her knee before him, and clasping his hand to her lips.

"Hearest thou that, my beloved Helen?" cried Bothwell, touching the clasped hands which rested on the coffin. He turned pale, and looked on Bruce. Bruce, in the glad moment of his joy at this happy consummation of so many years of blood, observed not his glance, but in exulting accents exclaimed, "Look up, my sister; and let thy soul, discoursing with our Wallace, tell him that Scotland is free, and Bruce's king indeed!"

She spoke not, she moved not. Bothwell raised her clay-cold face.

"That soul has fled, my lord!" said he; "but from yon eternal sphere, they now together look upon your joys. Here let their bodies rest; for 'they loved in their lives, and in their deaths they shall not be divided!"

Before the renewing of the moon, whose waning light witnessed their solemn obsequies, the aim of Wallace's life, the object of Helen's prayers, was accomplished. Peace reigned in Scotland. The discomfited King Edward died of chagrin in Carlisle; and his humbled son and successor sent to offer such honorable terms of pacification, that Bruce gave them acceptance, and a lasting tranquility spread prosperity and happiness throughout the land.

APPENDIX.

NOTE RESPECTING THE PERSONAL CONFORMATION OF SIR WILLIAM WALLACE AND KING ROBERT BRUCE.

The extraordinary bodily, as well as mental superiority which Wallace and Bruce possessed over their contemporaries, is thus recorded by Hector Boetius:

"About the latter end of the year 1430, King James I. (of Scotland), on returning to Perth from St. Andrews, found his curiosity excited to visit a very old lady of the house of Erskine, who resided in the Castle of Kinnoul. In consequence of her extreme old age she had lost her sight, but all her other senses were entire, and her body was yet firm and active. She had seen William Wallace and Robert Bruce in her earliest youth and frequently told particulars of them. The king, who entertained a love and veneration for great men, resolved to visit the old lady, that he might hear her describe the manners and strength of the two heroes. He therefore sent a message acquainting her that he would come to her the next day. When she was told that the king was approaching, she went down into the hall of her castle, attended by a train of matrons, many of whom were her own descendants. She advanced to meet his majesty so easily and gracefully that he doubted her being blind! At his desire she embraced and kissed him. He took her by the hand and made her sit down on the seat next to him, and then, in a long conference, he interrogated her on ancient matters. Among others he asked her to tell him what sort of a man William Wallace was; what was his personal figure; what his bearing, and with what degree of strength he was endowed. He put the same comparing question to her concerning Robert Bruce. 'Robert,' said she, 'was a man beautiful, and of fine appearance. His strength was so great that he could easily have overcome any mortal man of his time, save one--Sir William Wallace!

But in so far as he excelled other men, he was excelled by Wallace, both in stature and in bodily strength! For in wrestling, Wallace could have overthrown two such men as Robert. And he was comely as well as strong, and full of the beauty of wisdom.'"

I might have thought, had I known the above record in my young days, when I heard my old friend Luckie Forbes describe the Scottish heroes, that she must have been one of those matrons of honor to Lady Kinnoul, and had "seen baith the stalwarth chiefs" in her also venerable life.

But the description of my humble historiographer was the work of her own heart, suggested there by tradition, and a holy reverence of even the name of William Wallace to help it out; and so my pen, moved by the same impulse, has attempted to copy the picture she presented.

NOTE CONCERNING JOANNA OF MAR AND STRATHEARN.

This unhappy and wicked woman's descendance, as daughter of a Princess of the Orkneys, and her husband, Mellis, Earl of Strathearn, is given in all the old Scottish genealogical words, and her marriage with Earl de Warenne, followed up by her most unnatural treasons against her native country, are not less faithfully recorded. But it is something curious that while revising this volume a few years ago, I met a paragraph in the Morning Post newspaper, relative to this very lady--now dead upward of five hundred years--and dated August 26th, 1831; almost the very anniversary-day of Sir William Wallace's death!

It was an extract from the Perth Courier, and runs thus:

"In preparing the foundation of the cla.s.sical monument which Lady Baird is about to erect on Tom-a-Chastel, to the memory of Sir David, the workmen discovered the remains of an extensive edifice, intermixed with a blackish mold, in which human bones frequently occur, with stirrups, buckles, and other decayed fragments of ancient armor. In an excavation were found a quant.i.ty of black earth, the debris of animal matter, some human bones, a bracelet, and a considerable portion of charcoal, from which it may be concluded that the individuals whose remains were discovered, had perished during a conflagration of the castle. The tradition of the country is, that--Three ladies had been there burned to death. And as it is known that the Lady of Strathearn, a daughter of the Earl of Orkney, involved herself in the quarrels between Bruce and Baliol, and was, after the ascendency of the former, in a parliament held at Scone in 1329, doomed to perpetual imprisonment for the crime of laesoe majestatis, it is no violent stretch of conjecture to come to the conclusion that this very lady may have been one of the unhappy victims whose remains have been thus accidentally brought to light. The excavation undoubtedly (being the most probably supposition) was that usually found in the base of the dungeon-keep of the castle. Tom-a-Chastel, on the summit of which Sir David Baird's monument is to be placed, overlooks the whole strath, and is even visible from Dundee." So far the note from the Perth, newspaper (which was first appended to this "almost veritable romance--biography of Sir William Wallace," in the edition of 1831); and on comparing the circ.u.mstances and dates of the period referred to, it does not seem improbable that such might have been the fearful end of that ambitious and cruelly impa.s.sioned woman. Earl de Warenne was not a man to burden himself with cares for such a partner, after her treasons had become abortive, in the secret continuance of which, most likely, she had been discovered in some of her territorial permitted visits to her inherited lands in Scotland. And the relics of the other two female forms found in the ashes, may reasonably be supposed to have been those of her personal attendants, sharing her captivity.

The above coincidence of recollections between the far past, and the present nearly but pa.s.sing events, may be regarded as rather remarkable, for the hill of Tom-a-Chastel may now be looked upon as an object recalling to memory of two heroes. One Scotland's n.o.blest son, of full five hundred ages gone! The other, her boast on the plains of India, within our own remembrance. While the same summit brings two of her daughters likewise to eminent recollection. One that disgraced her s.e.x in every relation of life; the other, who honors it, in all. The hand of the first would have destroyed her country's greatest hero; the hand of the second raised a tumulus, to maintain the memory and the example of such true sons of her country in a perpetual existence.

THE SCARF OF JAMES THE FIFTH OF SCOTLAND, IN THE POSSESSION OF DR.

JEFFERSON, OF WEST LODGE, CLAPHAM.

This scarf belonged to, and was worn by the truly royal, but something romantically adventurous King of Scotland, James the Fifth. He was fond of roaming about in his dominions, like the celebrated Haroun Al Ras.h.i.+d, in various disguises, to see and to observe; and to make acquaintance with his people of all degrees, without being known by them. In one of these incognito wanderings, about the year 1533, he was hospitably entertained for a night, by an ancestor of Dr.

Jefferson's lady, a man of liberal name in the country; and who unwittingly had given most courteous bed and board to his sovereign (then personally unknown to him), when he thought he was entertaining a person not much above the rank of the commonest degree, it being the monarch's humor generally to a.s.sume the most ordinary garb outwardly; and it therefore depended on the tact of the entertainer, from his own inherent n.o.bleness, to discern the real quality of the mind and manners of his transitory guest. The host in question did not discern that it was his sovereign he was then treating like a prince; but he felt it was a visitant, be he whom he may, that was worthy his utmost respect; and the monarch, highly pleased with his night's lodging, and previous gracious welcome, on his departure next morning, presented to the lady of the mansion a grateful tribute to her good care, in the form of a small parcel rolled up, which, when opened, they found to be a splendid scarf, indorsed to herself and lord, in the name of the Gudemon o'

Ballangeich. All then knew it was the "generous and pleasant King of Scotland" who had been their guest.

The Scottish Chief on whom this beautiful memorial of received hospitality had been bestowed, was John Baird, of Burntisland, in Fifes.h.i.+re, from whom the writer of this note literally traces the present inheritance of the scarf. John Burgh had an only daughter, who married John Balfour, K. N., who also had an only daughter, and she married Gilbert Blair, brother to Blair of Ard-Blair. Their only son, James Blair, married Jane Morrison, daughter of -- Morrison, Esq., and an heiress of the brave house of Ramsay, by which marriage the ancient and honorable families of Burgh, Blair, and Ramsay, were woven into one branch; and from this branch, indeed, from the first set-off of its united stem was born of this marriage, Margaret Blair, who dying in the year 1836, bequeathed the long-cherished scarf to Dr. Jefferson, the worthy husband of her beloved kinswoman--direct in the line of John Burgh, to whom it had originally been given.

The scarf was composed of a rich and brilliant tissue of gold and silver threads, interwoven with silk-embroidered flowers in their natural colors. They are chiefly pansies, the emblems of remembrance; thistles, the old insignia of Scotland; and the field daisy, the favorite symbol of King James' mother, the beautiful Queen Margaret.

The flowers, entwined together, run in stripes down the splendid web of the scarf, which terminates at each end with what has been a magnificent fringe of similar hues and brightness. The scarf is seven feet in length, by one foot nine inches in width.

This interesting bequest was still further enriched to Dr. Jefferson by the addition of a cap and gloves, which, tradition says, the worthy chief of Burntisland wore on his nuptial day. There was also a smaller pair of gloves, of a more delicate size and texture, appropriated by the same testimony to the fair bride. But these articles are supposed to have been of earlier fabric than that of the scarf--probably the year 1500--and they are of less exquisite manufacture; the former appearing to be from the fine looms of France, and the latter wrought in the less practiced machinery of our then ruder northern isle. The cap is of a pale red silk, with gold cord and embroidery down the seams, it being formed to fit the head, and therefore in compartments; broad where they are inserted into the rich fillet-band round the head, and narrowing to the closely-fitting top. It looked something like an Albanian cap. The gloves, which are said to have been those of the chief, were of a brownish fine leather, with embroidered gauntlet tops.

The lady's are of a lighter hue, still softer leather, with gay fringe of varied-colored silk and gold, and ta.s.sels at the wrists. Both these pairs of gloves were well shaped and most neatly sewed.

On these relics of antiquity, and of ancestorial memorials devolving on Dr. Jefferson, he sought for a place of deposit for them, suitable to their dignity, their character, and their times. He had in his possession a curious old table, of the era of Henry the Eighth, which he soon adapted to the purpose. Its large oaken slab was of sufficient dimensions to admit of the royal gift being spread in graceful folds over the dark surface of the wood, which the better displayed the tissue's interchanging tints, and also gave room for the disposal of the cap and gloves, which were placed in a kind of armorial crest between its gauntlets, at the head of the scarf, and at its foot was added a beautifully written inscription in old emblazoned characters, historic of the interesting relics above. The whole is secured from dust or other injury by a covering of plate-gla.s.s, extending over the entire surface of the table, which, having a raised carved oak parapet-border of about four inches high along all its sides, forms a sort of castellated sanctuary that completely defends from accident the gla.s.s and the treasure beneath it; which is distinctly seen through the lucid medium.

The shape of the table is like that we call a sofa-table, but very long, being five feet by two and a half. The depth of its frieze altogether is eight inches, for it extends four inches below the four-inch parapet above, and this lower portion is worked into a foliage enwreathing the sides. The whole height of the table from the feet of its four-clawed pedestal, is three feet two inches. This pedestal, or rather branching stem of polished oak--being of the st.u.r.dy contour of its original growth, with its superb ramifications supporting the precious slab above--shows an elaborate design in its carvings, far beyond my power to describe, so luxuriant, so various, so intricate, one might almost suppose that the matchless tool of the famous Benevanta Cellini had traced its wild and graceful grotesque.

The four claws, which are like roots from the stem of the pedestal, partake of the same rich arabesque in their design, and terminate in the form of lion's paws.

The End.