The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter (good romance books to read TXT) 📕

Bruce with such tidings, but to send hither all the spare forces in Perthshire, to maintain you in your rights."

"No force, my dear Bothwell, must be used so hold me in a power which now would only keep alive a spirit of discord in my country. If I dare apply the words of my Divine Master, I would say, I came not to bring a sword but peace to the people of Scotland! Then, if they are weary of me, let me go. Bruce will recover, they will rally round his standard, and all be well."

"Oh, Wallace! Wallace!" cried Bothwell, "the scene I have this day witnessed is enough to make a traitor of me. I could forswear my insensible country—I could immolate its ungrateful chieftains on those very lands which your generous arm restored to these worthless men!" He threw himself into a seat, and leaned his burning forehead against his hand.

"Cousin, you declare my sentiments," rejoined Edwin; "my soul can never again associate with these sons of Envy. I cannot recognize a countryman in any one of them; and, should Sir William Wallace quit a land so unworthy of his virtues, where he goes I will go—his asylum shall be my country, and Edwin Ruthven will forget that he ever was a Scot."

"Never," cried Wallace, turning on him one of those looks which struck conviction into the heart. "Is man more just than God? Though a thousand of your countrymen offend you by their crimes, yet while there remains one honest Scot, for his sake and his posterity it is your duty to be a patriot. A nation is one great family, and every individual in it is as much bound to promote the general good as a brother or a father to maintain the welfare of his nearest kindred. And it the transgression of one son be no arouse for the omission of another, in like manner, the ruin these turbulent lords would bring upon Scotland is no excuse for your desertion of your interest. I would not leave the helm of my country did she not thrust me from it; but though cast by her into the waves, would you not blush for your friend should he wish her other than a peaceful haven?" Edwin spoke not, but putting the hand of Wallace to his lips, left the tent.

"Oh!" cried Bothwell, looking after him, "that the breast of woman had but half that boy's tenderness! And yet all of that dangerous sex are not like this hyena-hearted Lady Strathearn. Tell me, try friend, did she not, when she disappeared so strangely from Huntingtower, fly to you? I now suspect, from certain remembrances, that she and the Green Knight are one aid the same person. Acknowledge it, and I will unmask her at once to the court she has deceived."

"She has deceived no one," replied Wallace. "Before she spoke, the members of that court were determined to brand me with guilt, and her charge merely supplied the place of others which they would have devised against me. Whatever she may be, my dear Bothwell, for the sake of whose name she once bore, let us not expose her to open shame. Her love or her hatred are alike indifferent to me now, for I neither of them do I owe that innate malice of my countrymen which has only made her calumny the occasion of manifesting their resolution to make me infamous. But that, my friend, is beyond her compass. I have done my duty to Scotland, and that conviction must live in every honest heart—ay, and with dishonest too—for did they not fear my integrity, they would not have thought it necessary to deprive me of power. Heaven shield our prince! I dread that Badenoch's next shaft may be at him!"

"No," cried Bothwell, "all is leveled at his best friend. In a low voice, I taxed the regent with disloyalty for permitting this outrage on you, and his basely envious answer was: 'Wallace's removal is Bruce's security; who will acknowledge him when they know that this man is his dictator?'"

Wallace sighed at this reply, which only confirmed him in his resolution, and he told Bothwell that he saw no alternative, if he wished to still the agitations of his country, and preserve its prince from premature discovery, but to indeed remove the subject of all these contentions from their sight.

"Attempt it not!" exclaimed Bothwell; "propose but a step toward that end, and you will determine me to avenge my country, at the peril of my own life, on all in that accursed assembly who have menaced yours!" In short, the young earl's denunciations were so earnest against the lords in Stirling, that Wallace, thinking it dangerous to exasperate him further, consented to remain in his camp till the arrival of Ruthven should bring him the advantage of his counsel.

The issue showed that Bothwell was not mistaken. The majority of the Scottish nobles envied Wallace his glory, and hated him for that virtue which drew the eyes of the people to compare him with their selfish courses. The regent, hoping to become the first in Bruce's favor, was not less urgent to ruin the man who so deservedly stood the highest in that prince's esteem. He had therefore entered warmly into the project of Lady Strathearn. But when, during a select conference between them, previous to her open charge of Wallace, she named Sir Thomas de Longueville as one of his foreign emissaries, Cummin observed:

"If you would have your accusation succeed, do not mention that knight at all. He is my friend. He is now ill near Perth, and must know nothing of this affair till it be over. Should he live, he will nobly thank you for your forbearance; should he die, I will repay you as becomes your nearest kinsman."

All were thus united in one determined effort to hurl Wallace from his station in the state. But when they believed that done, they quarreled amongst themselves in deciding who was to fill the great military office, which his prowess had now rendered a post rather of honor than of danger.

In the midst of these feuds Sir Simon Fraser abruptly appeared in the council-hall. His countenance proclaimed his tidings. Lennox and Loch-awe (who had duly attended, in hopes of bringing over some of the more pliable chiefs to embrace the cause of justice) listened with something like exultation to his suddenly disastrous information. When the English governor at Berwick learned the removal of Wallace from his command and the consequent consternation of the Scottish troops, instead of surrendering at sunset as was expected, he sallied out at the head of the whole garrison, and attacking the Scots by surprise, gave them a total defeat. Every outpost around the town was retaken by the Southrons, the army of Fraser was cut to pieces or put to flight, and himself now arriving at Stirling, smarting with many a wound but more under his dishonor, to show to the Regent of Scotland the evil of having superseded the only man whom the enemy feared. The council stood in silence, staring on each other; and, to add to their dismay, Fraser had hardly completed his narration, before a messenger from Tiviotdale arrived to inform the regent that King Edward was himself within a few miles of the Cheviots; and, from the recovered position of Berwick, must have even now poured his thousands over those hills upon the plains beneath. While all the citadel was indecision, tumult, and alarm, Lennox hastened to Wallace's camp with the news.

Lord Ruthven and the Perthshire chiefs were already there. They had arrived early in the morning, but with unpromising tidings of Bruce. The state of his wound had induced a constant delirium. But still Wallace clung to the hope that his country was not doomed to perish—that its prince's recovery was only protracted. In the midst of this anxiety, Lennox entered; and relating what he had just heard, turned the whole current of the auditor's ideas. Wallace started from his seat. His hand mechanically caught up his sword, which lay upon the table. Lennox gazed at him with animated veneration. "There is not a man in the citadel," cried he, "who does not appear at his wits' end, and incapable of facing this often-beaten foe. Will you, Wallace, again condescend to save a country that has treated you so ungratefully?"

"I would die in its trenches!" cried the chief, with a generous forgiveness of all his injuries suffusing his magnanimous heart.

Lord Loch-awe soon after appeared, and corroborating the testimony of Lennox added, that on the regent's sending word to the troops on the south of Stirling, that in consequence of the treason of Sir William Wallace the supreme command was taken from him, and they must immediately march out under the orders of Sir Simon Fraser, to face a new incursion of the enemy, they began to murmur among themselves, saying that since Wallace was found to be a traitor, they knew not whom to trust; but certainly it should not be a beaten general. With these whisperings, they slid away from their standards; and when Loch-awe left them they were dispersed on all sides, like an already discomfited army.

CHAPTER LXXIV.

Arthur's Seat.

For a day or two the paralyzed terrors of the people, and the tumults in the citadel, seemed portentous of immediate ruin. A large detachment from the royal army had entered Scotland by the marine gate of Berwick; and, headed by De Warenne, was advancing rapidly toward Edinburgh. Not a soldier belonging to the regent remained on the carse; and the distant chiefs to whom he sent for aid refused it, alleging that the discovery of Wallace's patriotism having been a delusion, had made them suspect all men; and, now locking themselves within their own castles, each true Scot would there securely view a struggle in which they could feel no personal interest.

Seeing the danger of the realm, and hearing from the Lords Ruthven and Bothwell that their troops would follow no other leader than Sir William Wallace, and hopeless of any prompt decision from amongst the contusion of the council, Badenoch yielded a stern assent to the only apparent means of saving his sinking country. He turned ashy pale, while his silence granted to Lord Loch-awe the necessity of imploring Sir William Wallace to again stretch out his arm in their behalf. With this embassy the venerable chief had returned exultingly to Ballochgeich; and the so lately branded Wallace, branded as the intended betrayer of Scotland, was solicited by his very accusers to assume the trust of their sole defense!

"Such is the triumph of virtue!" whispered Edwin to his friend, as he vaulted on his horse.

A luminous smile from Wallace acknowledged that he felt the tribute and, looking up to Heaven ere he placed his helmet on his head, he said:

"Thence comes my power! and the satisfaction it brings, whether attended by man's applause or his blame, he cannot take from me. I now, perhaps for the last time, arm this head for Scotland. May the God in whom I trust again crown it with victory, and forever after bind the brows of our rightful sovereign with peace!"

While Wallace pursued his march, the regent was quite at a stand, confounded at the turn which events had taken, and hardly knowing whether to make another essay to collect forces for the support of their former leader, or to follow the refractory counsels of his lords, and await in inactivity the issue of the expected battle. He knew not bow to act, but a letter from Lady Strathearn decided him.

Though partly triumphant in her charges, yet the accusations of Bothwell had disconcerted her; and though the restoration of Wallace to his undisputed authority in the state; seemed to her next to impossible, still she resolved to take another step, to confirm her influence over the discontented of her country, and most likely to insure the vengeance she panted to bring upon her victim's head. To this end, on the very evening that she retreated in terror from the council hall, she set forward to the borders; and, easily passing thence to the English camp (then pitched at Alnwick), was soon admitted to the castle, where De Warenne lodged. She was too well taught in the school of vanity not to have remarked the admiration with which that earl had regarded her while he was a prisoner in