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

the prince who made the requisition, yielded to necessity, and resigned the whole into his hands.

Next morning Bruce entered Stirling as a conqueror, with the whole of his kingdom at his feet; for, from the Solway Frith to the Northern Ocean, no Scottish town or castle owned a foreign master. The acclamations of a rescued people rent the skies; and, while prayers and blessings poured on him from above, below, and around, he did indeed feel himself a king, and that he had returned to the land of his forefathers. While he sat on his proud war-horse, in front of the great gates of the citadel, now thrown wide asunder to admit its rightful sovereign, his noble prisoners came forward. They bent their knees before him; and delivering their swords, received in return, his gracious assurance of mercy. At this moment all Scottish hearts and wishes seemed riveted on their youthful monarch. Dismounting from his steed, he raised his helmet from his head, as the souls of his enemies, he raised his helmet from his head, as the Bishop of Dunkeld, followed by all the ecclesiastics in the town, came forward to wait upon the triumph of their king.

The beautiful anthem of the virgins of Israel on the conquests of David, was chanted forth by the nuns who in this heaven-hallowed hour, like the spirits of the blest, revisited the world to give the chosen of their land, "All hail."

The words, the scene, smote the heart of Bothwell; he turned aside and wept. Where were now the buoyant feelings with which he had followed the similar triumph of Wallace into these gates? "Buried, thou martyred hero, in thy bloody grave!" New men and new services seemed to have worn out remembrance of the past; but in the memories of even this joyous crowd, Wallace lived, though like a bright light which had passed through their path, and was gone never more to return.

On entering the citadel, Bruce was informed by Mowbray, the English governor, that he would find a lady there in a frightful state of mental derangement, and who might need his protection. A question or two from the victorious monarch told him that this was the Countess of Strathearn. On the revolted abthanes having betrayed Wallace and his country to England, the joy and ambition of the countess knew no bounds; and hoping to eventually persuade Edward to adjudge to her the crown, she made it apparent to the English king how useful would be her services to Scotland; while with a plenary though secret mission, she took her course through her native land, to discover who were inimical to the foreign interest, and who, likely to promote her own; after this circuit, she fixed her mimic court at Stirling, and living there in real magnificence, exercised the functions of a vice-queen. At this period intelligence arrived, which the governor thought would fill her with exultation; and hastening to declare it, he proclaimed to her, that the King of England's authority was now firmly established in Scotland, for that on the twenty-third of August Sir William Wallace had been executed in London, according to all the forms of law, upon the Tower Hill!

On the full declaration of this event, she fell senseless on the floor. It was not until the next morning that she recovered to perfect animation, and then her ravings were horrible and violent. She accused herself of the murder of Sir William Wallace. She seemed to hear him upbraid her with his fate: and her shrieks and tremendous ejaculations so fearfully presented the scene of his death before the eyes of her attendants, that her women fled and none others of that sex would afterward venture to approach her. In these fearful moments the dreadful confession of all her premeditated guilt, of her infuriate and disappointed passion for Wallace, and her vowed revenge, were revealed, under circumstances so shocking, that the English governor declared to the King of Scots, while he conducted him toward her apartment, that he would rather wear out his life in a rayless dungeon, then endure one hour of her agonies.

There was a dead silence in her chamber as they approached the door. Mowbray cautiously opened it, and discovered the object of their visit. She was seated at the further end of the room on the floor, enveloped in a mass of scarlet velvet she had drawn off her bed; her hands clasped her knees, and she bent forward, with her eyes fixed on the door at which they entered. Her once dazzling beauty was now transformed to a haggard glare—the terrible lightning which gleamed on the face of Satan, when he sat brooding on the burning marl of Tartarus.

She remained motionless as they advanced. But when Bruce stopped directly before her, contemplating with horror the woman whom he regarded as one of the murderers of his most beloved friend, she sprung at once upon him, and clinging to him, with shrieks buried her head in his bosom. "Save me! save me!" cried she. "Mar drags me down to hell; I burn there, and yet I die not!" Then bursting from Bruce, with an imprecation that froze his blood, she flew to the other side of the chamber, crying aloud, "Thou hast torn out my heart! Fiend, I took thee for Wallace—but I murdered him!" Her agonies, her yells, her attempts at self-violence, were now so dreadful, that Bruce, raising her bleeding from the hearth on which she had furiously dashed her head, put her into the arms of the men who attended her, and then, with an awful sense of Divine retribution, left the apartment.

Chapter LXXXIX.

Bannockburn.

The generality of his prisoners Bruce directed should be kept safe in the citadel; but to Mobray he gave his liberty, and ordered every means to facilitate the commodious journey of that brave knight whom he had requested to convey the insane Lady Strathearn to the protection of her husband.

Mowbray accepted his freedom with gratitude, and gladly set forth with his unhappy charge to meet his sovereign. Expectation of Edward's approach had been the reason of his withdrawing his herald from the camp of Bruce, and though the king did not arrive time enough to save Stirling, Mowbray yet hoped he might still be continuing his promised march. This anticipation the Southron's loyalty would not allow him to impart to Bruce, and he bade that generous prince adieu, with the full belief of soon returning to find him the vanquished of Edward.

At the decline of day Bruce returned to his camp, to pass the night in the field with his soldiers, intending next morning to give his last orders to the detachments which he meant to send out under the command of Lennox and Douglas, to disperse themselves over the border counties, and there keep station till that peace should be signed by England which he was determined, by unabated hostilities, to compel.

Having taken these measures for the security of his kingdom and the establishment of his own happiness, he had just returned to his tent on the banks of the Bannockburn when Grimsby, his now faithful attendant, conducted an armed knight into his presence. The light of the lamp which stood on the table, streaming full on the face of the stranger, discovered to the king his English friend, the intrepid Montgomery. With an exclamation of glad surprise Bruce would have clasped him in his arms; but Montgomery dropping on his knee, exclaimed, "Receive a subject as well as a friend, victorious and virtuous prince! I have forsworn the vassalage of the Plantagenets; and thus, without title or land, with only a faithful heart, Gilbert Hambledon comes to vow himself yours and Scotland's forever."

Bruce raised him from the ground, and welcoming him with the warm embrace of friendship, inquired the cause of so extraordinary an abjuration of his legal sovereign. "No light matter," observed the king, "could have so wrought upon my noble Montgomery!"

"Montgomery no more!" replied the ear, with indignant eagerness; "when I threw the insignia of my earldom at the feet of the unjust Edward, I told him that I would lay the saw to the root of the nobility I had derived from his house, and cut it through; that I would sooner leave my posterity without titles and without wealth, than deprive them of real honor.** I have done as I said! And yet I come not without a treasure, for the sacred corpse of William Wallace is now in my bark, floating on the waves of the Forth!"

**This event is perpetuated in the crest of the noble family of
Hamilton in Scotland.

The subjugation of England would hardly have been so welcome to Bruce as this intelligence. He received it with an eloquent though unutterable look of gratitude. Hambledon continued: "On the tyrant summoning the peers of England to follow him to the destruction of Scotland, Gloucester got excused under a plea of illness, and I could not but show a disinclination to obey. This occasioned some remarks from Edward respecting my known attachment to the Scottish cause, and they were so couched as to draw from me this honest answer; my heart would not, for the wealth of the world, permit me to join in the projected invasion, since I had seen the spot in my own country where a most inordinate ambition had cut down the flower of all knighthood, because he was a Scot who would not sell his birthright! The king left me in wrath and threatened to make me recant my words—I as proudly declared I would maintain them. Next morning, being in waiting on the prince, I entered his chamber, and found John le de Spencer (the coward who so basely insulted Wallace on the day of his condemnation); he was sitting with his highness. On my offering the services due from my office, this worthless minion turned on me, and accused me of having declined joining the army for the sole purpose of executing some plot in London, devised between me and my Scottish partisans for the subversion of the English monarchy. I denied the charge. He enforced it with oaths, and I spurned his allegations. The prince, who believed him, furiously gave me the lie, and commanded me as a traitor to leave his presence. I refused to stir an inch till I made the base heart of Le de Spencer retract his falsehood. The coward took courage on his master's support, and drawing his sword upon me, in language that would blister my tongue to repeat, threatened to compel my departure. He struck me on the face with his weapon. The arms of his prince could not then save him; I thrust him through the body, and he fell. Edward ran on me with his dagger, but I wrested it from him. Then it was that, I reply to his menaces, I revoked my fealty to a sovereign I abhorred, a prince I despised. Leaving his presence before the fluctuations of so versatile a mind could fix upon seizing me, I hastened to Highgate, to convey away the body of our friend from its brief sanctuary. The same night I embarked it and myself on board a ship of my own, and am now at your feet, brave and just king!—no longer Montgomery, but a true Scot in heart and loyalty."

"And as a kinsman, generous Hambledon!" returned Bruce, "I receive and will portion thee. My paternal lands of Cadzow, on the Clyde, shall be thine forever; and may thy posterity be as worthy of the inheritance as their ancestor is of all my love and confidence."

Hambledon, having received his new sovereign's directions concerning the disembarkation of those sacred remains, which the young king declared he should welcome as the pledge of Heaven to bless his victories with peace, returned to the haven, where Wallace rested in that sleep which even the voice of friendship could not disturb.

At the hour of the midnight watch, the trumpets of approaching heralds resounded without the camp. Bruce hastened to the council-tent to receive the now anticipated tidings. The communications of Hambledon had given him reason to expect another struggle for his kingdom, and the message of the trumpets declared it might be a mortal one.

At the head of a hundred thousand men, Edward had forced a rapid passage through the Lowlands, and was now within a few hours' march of Stirling, fully determined to bury Scotland under her own slain,