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

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 bastardized people to whom I understand you now give the fond appellation of sons. Having recognized the relationship, 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 God! 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 Cummins 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 vassal," 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 friendship, 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 ingratitude of him for whom I have offended my God and wronged my country, have broken my heart. I shall die, Robert, but you will avenge me!"

"May God 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 circumstances 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 assert 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 passion 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 Cummin is too ambitious to have allowed my life to pass 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