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

Northumberland. Wallace found the strangeness of his situation. He, the conqueror of Edward, to have been singing as a mendicant in his halls; and having given laws to the two great men before him, he now sat in their view unobserved and unfeared! Their figures concealed that of Bruce, but at last when all rose together, he heard Gloucester say, in rather an elevated voice, "Keep up your spirits. This envy of your base countrymen must recoil upon themselves. It cannot be long before King Edward discovers the motives of their accusations, and his noble nature will acquit you accordingly."

"My acquittal," replied Bruce, in a firm tone, "cannot restore what Edward's injustice has rifled from me. I abide by the test of my own actions, and by it will open the door of my freedom. Your king may depend on it," added he, with a sarcastic smile, "that I am not a man to be influenced against the right. Where I owe duty I will pay it to the uttermost farthing."

Not apprehending the true meaning of this speech, Percy immediately answered, "I believe you, and so must all that world; for did you not give brave proofs of it that fearful night on the Carron, in bearing arms against the triumphant Wallace?"

"I did indeed give proofs of it," returned Bruce, "which I hope the world will one day know, by bearing arms against the usurper of my country's rights! and in defiance of injustice and of treason, before men and angels I swear," cried he, "to perform my duty to the end—to retrieve, to honor the insulted, the degraded name of Bruce!"

The two earls fell back before the vehement action which accompanied this burst from the soul of Bruce; and Wallace caught a glimpse of his youthful form, which stood pre-eminent in patriotic virtue between the Southron lords: his fine countenance glowed, and his brave spirit seemed to emanate in light from every part of his body. "My prince and brother!" exclaimed Wallace to himself, ready to rush forward and throw himself at his feet, or into his arms.

Gloucester, as little as Northumberland, comprehending Bruce's ambiguous declaration, replied, "Let not your heart, my brave friend, burn too hotly against the king for this arrest. He will be the more urgent to obliterate by kindness this injustice when he understands the aims of the Cummins. I have myself felt his misplaced wrath; and who now is more favored by Edward than Ralph de Monthermer? My case will be yours. Good night, Bruce. May propitious dreams repeat the augury of your true friends!" Percy shook hands with the young earl, and the two English lords left the room.

Wallace could now take a more leisurely survey of Bruce. He no longer wore gay embroidered hacqueton; his tunic was black velvet, and all the rest of his garments accorded with the same mourning hue. Soon after the lords had quitted him, the buoyant elasticity of his figure, which before seemed ready to rise from the earth, so was his soul elevated by his sublime resolves, gave way to melancholy retrospections, and he threw himself into a chair with his hands clasped upon his knee and his eyes fixed in musing gaze upon the floor. It was now that Wallace touched the strings of his harp. "The Death of Cathullin" wailed from the sounding notes; but Bruce heard as though he heard them not; they sooth his mood without his perceiving what it was that calmed, yet deepened, the saddening thoughts which possessed him. His posture remained the same; and sigh after sigh gave the only response to the strains of the bard.

Wallace grew impatient for the chimes of that vesper bell which, by assuring Bruce's attendants that he was going to rest, would secure from interruption the conference he meditated. Two servants entered. Bruce, scarcely looking up, bade them withdraw; he should not need their attendance; he did not know when he should go to bed; and he desired to be no further disturbed. The men obeyed; and Wallace, changing the melancholy strain of his harp, struck the chords to the proud triumph he had played in the hall. Not one note of either ballad had he yet sung to Bruce; but when he came to the passage in the latter appropriated to these lines—

    "Arise, glory of Albin, from thy cloud,
     And shine upon thy own!"

he could not forbear giving the words voice. Bruce started from his seat. He looked toward the minstrel—he walked the room in great disorder. The pealing sounds of the harp, and his own mental confusion, prevented his distinguishing that it was not the voice of his senachie. The words alone he heard; and they seemed a call which his heart panted to obey. The hand of Wallace paused upon the instrument. He looked around to see that observation was indeed at a distance. Not that he dreaded harm to himself, for his magnanimous mind, courageous from infancy, by a natural instinct had never known personal fear; but anxious not to precipitate Bruce into useless danger, he first satisfied himself that all was safe, and then, as the young earl sat in a paroxysm of racking reflections (for they brought self-blame, or rather a blame on his father, which pierced him to the heart), Wallace slowly advanced from the recess. The agitated Bruce, accidentally raising his head, beheld a man in a minstrel's garb, much to tall to be his senachie, approaching him with a caution which he thought portended treachery. He sprung to his feet, and caught his sword from the table; but, in that moment, Wallace threw off his cowl. Bruce stood gazing on him, stiffened with astonishment. Wallace, in a low voice, exclaimed, "My prince! do you not know me?" Bruce, without speaking, threw his arms about his neck. He was silent, as he hung on him, but his tears flowed; he had much to say, but excess of emotion rendered it unutterable. As Wallace returned the fond embrace of friendship, he gently said, "How is it that I not only see you a close prisoner, but in these weeds?" Bruce at last forced himself to articulate: "I have known misery, in all its forms, since we parted; but I have not power to name even my grief of griefs, while trembling at the peril to which you have exposed yourself by seeking me! The vanquisher of Edward, the man who snatched Scotland from his grasp, were he known to be within these walls, would be a prize for which the boiling revenge of the tyrant would give half his kingdom! Think, then, my friend, how I shudder at this daring. I am surrounded by spies, and should you be discovered, Robert Bruce will then have the curses of his country added to the judgments which already have fallen on his head." As he spoke, they sat down together, and he continued: "Before I answer your questions, tell me what immediate cause could bring you to seek the alien Bruce in prison, and by what stratagem you came in this disguise into my apartment? Tell me the last, that I may judge, by the means, of your present safety!"

Wallace briefly related the events which had sent him from Scotland, his reencounter with Piers Gaveston, and his arrangement with the senachie. To the first part of the narrative, Bruce listened with indignation. "I knew," exclaimed he, "from the boastings of Athol and Buchan, that they had left in Scotland some dregs of heir own refractory spirits; but I could not have guessed that envy had so obliterated gratitude in the hearts of my countrymen. The wolves have now driven the shepherd from the fold," cried he, "and the flock will soon be devoured! Fatal was the hour for Scotland, and your friend, when you yielded to the voice of faction, and relinquished the power which would have finally given peace to the nation!"

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 Cummins. 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 Cummins, 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 assassins 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 title. Noble 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 friendship, 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 passed 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 assailed 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