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

and Wallace, mounting a richly-barbed Arabian, which had accompanied his splendid armor, took the road to Rouen.

Meanwhile, events not less momentous took place at Durham. The instant Wallace had followed the Earl of Gloucester from the apartment in the castle, it was entered by Sir Piers Gaveston. He demanded the minstrel. Bruce replied, he knew not where he was. Gaveston, eager to convince the king that he was no accomplice with the suspected person, put the question a second time, and in a tone which he meant should intimidate the Scottish prince—"Where is the minstrel?"

"I know not," replied Bruce.

"And will you dare to tell me, earl," asked his interrogator, "that within this quarter of an hour he has not been in this tower?—nay, in this very room? The guards in your antechamber have told me that he was; and can Lord Carrick stoop to utter a falsehood to screen an wandering beggar?"

While he was speaking, Bruce stood eying him with increasing scorn.
Gaveston paused.

"You expect me to answer you!" said the prince. "Out of respect to myself I will, for such is the unsullied honor of Robert Bruce, that even the air shall not be tainted with slander against his truth, without being repurified by its confutation. Gaveston, you have known me five years; two of them we passed together in the jousts of Flanders, and yet you believe me capable of falsehood! Know then, unworthy of the esteem I have bestowed on you, that neither to save mean or great, would I deviate from the strict line of truth. The man you seek may have been in this tower, in this room, as you present are, and as little am I bound to know where he now is, as whither you go when you relieve me from an inquisition which I hold myself accountable to no man to answer."

"'Tis well," cried Gaveston; "and I am to carry this haughty message to the king?"

"If you deliver it as a message," answered Bruce, "you will prove that they who are ready to suspect falsehood, find its utterance easy. My reply is to you. When King Edward speaks to me, I shall find the answer that is due to him."

"These attempts to provoke me into a private quarrel," cried Gaveston, "will not succeed. I am not to be so foiled in my duty. I must seek the man through your apartments."

"By whose authority?" demanded Bruce.

"By my own, as the loyal subject of my outraged monarch. He bade me bring the traitor before him; and thus I obey."

While speaking, Gaveston beckoned to his attendants to follow him to the door whence Wallace had disappeared. Bruce threw himself before it.

"I must forget the duty I owe to myself, before I allow you, or any other man, to invade my privacy. I have already given you the answer that becomes Robert Bruce; and in respect to your knighthood, instead of compelling I request you to withdraw."

Gaveston hesitated; but he knew the determined character of his opponent, and therefore, with no very good grace, muttering that he should hear of it from a more powerful quarter, he left the room.

And certainly his threats were not in this instance vain; for prompt was the arrival of a marshal and his officers to force Bruce before the king.

"Robert Bruce, Earl of Cleveland, Carrick and Annandale, I come to summon you into the presence of your liege lord, Edward of England."

"The Earl of Cleveland obeys," replied Bruce; and, with a fearless step, he walked out before the marshal.

When he entered the presence-chamber, Sir Piers Gaveston stood beside the royal couch, as if prepared to be his accuser. The king sat supported by pillows, paler with the mortifications of jealousy and baffled authority than from the effects of his wounds.

"Robert Bruce!" cried he, the moment his eyes fell on him; but the sight of his mourning habit made a stroke upon his heart that sent out evidence of remorse in large globules on his forehead; he paused, wiped his face with his handkerchief, and resumed: "Are you not afraid, presumptuous young man, thus to provoke your sovereign? Are you not afraid that I shall make that audacious head answer for the man whom you thus dare to screen from my just revenge?"

Bruce felt all the injuries he had suffered from this proud king rush at once upon his memory; and, without changing his position or lowering the lofty expression of his looks, he firmly answered: "The judgment of a just king I cannot fear; the sentence of an unjust one I despise."

"This to his majesty's face!" exclaimed Soulis.

"Insolence—rebellion—chastisement—even death!" were the words which murmured round the room at the honest reply.

Edward had too much good sense to echo any one of them; but turning to Bruce, with a sensation of shame he would gladly have repressed, he said that, in consideration of his youth, he would pardon him what had passed, and reinstate him in all the late Earl of Carrick's honors, if he would immediately declare where he had hidden the offending minstrel.

"I have not hidden him," cried Bruce; "nor do I know where he is; but had that been confided to me, as I know him to be an innocent man, no power on earth should have wrenched him from me!"

"Self-sufficient boy!" exclaimed Earl Buchan, with a laugh of contempt; "do you flatter yourself that he would trust such a novice as you are with secrets of this nature?"

Bruce turned on him an eye of fire.

"Buchan," replied he, "I will answer you on other ground. Meanwhile, remember that the secrets of good men are open to every virtuous heart; those of the wicked they would be glad to conceal from themselves."

"Robert Bruce," cried the king, "before I came this northern journey I ever found you one of the most devoted of my servants, the gentlest youth in my court; and how do I see you at this moment? Braving my nobles to my face! How is it that until now this spirit never broke forth?"

"Because," answered the prince, "until now I have never seen the virtuous friend whom you call upon me to betray."

"Then you confess," cried the king, "that he was an instigator to rebellion?"

"I avow," answered Bruce, "that I never knew what true loyalty was till he taught it me; I never knew the nature of real chastity till he explained it to me; nor comprehended what virtue might be till he allowed me to see in himself incorruptible fidelity, bravery undaunted, and a purity of heart not to be contaminated! And this is the man on whom these lords would fasten a charge of treason and adultery! But out of the filthy depths of their own breast arise the streams from which they would blacked his fairness."

"Your vindication," cried the king, "confirms his guilt. You admit that he is not a minstrel in reality. Wherefore, then, did he steal in ambuscade into my palace, but to betray either my honor or my life—perhaps both?"

"His errand here was to see me."

"Rash boy!" cried Edward; "then you acknowledge yourself a premeditated conspirator against me?"

Soulis now whispered in the king's ear, but so low that Bruce did not hear him.

"Penetrate further, my liege; this may be only a false confession to shield the queen's character. She who has once betrayed her duty, finds it easy to reward such handsome advocates."

The scarlet of inextinguishable wrath now burned on the face of Edward. "I will confront them," returned he; "surprise them into betraying each other."

By his immediate orders the queen was brought in. She leaned on the
Countess of Gloucester.

"Jane," cried the king, "leave that woman; let her impudence sustain her."

"Rather her innocence, my lord," said the countess, bowing, and hesitating to go.

"Leave her to that," returned the incensed husband, "and she would grovel on the earth like her own base passions. But stand before me she shall, and without other support than the devils within her."

"For pity!" cried the queen, extending her clasped hands toward Edward, and bursting into tears; "have mercy on me, for I am innocent!"

"Prove it then," cried the king, "by agreeing with this confidant of your minstrel, and at once tell me by what name you addressed him when you allured him to my court? Is he French, Spanish, or English?"

"By the Virgin's holy purity, I swear!" cried the queen, sinking on her knees, "that I never allured him to this court; I never beheld him till I saw him at the bishop's banquet; and for his name, I know it not."

"Oh, vilest of the vile!" cried the king, fiercely grasping his couch; "and didst thou become a wanton at a glance? From my sight this moment, or I shall blast thee!"

The queen dropped senseless into the arms of the Earl of Gloucester, who at that moment entered from seeing Wallace through the cavern. At sight of him, Bruce knew that his friend was safe; and fearless for himself when the cause of outraged innocence was at stake, he suddenly exclaimed:

"By one word, King Edward, I will confirm the blamelessness of this injured queen. Listen to me, not as a monarch and an enemy, but with the unbiased judgment of man with man; and then ask your own brave heart if it would be possible for Sir William Wallace to be a seducer."

Every mouth was dumb at the enunciation of that name. None dared open a lip in accusation; and the king himself, thunderstruck alike with the boldness of the conqueror venturing within the grasp of his revenge and at the daringness of Bruce in thus declaring his connection with him, for a few minutes he knew not what to answer; only he had received conviction of his wife's innocence! He was too well acquainted with the history and uniform conduct of Wallace to doubt his honor in this transaction; and though a transient fancy of the queen's might have had existence, yet he had now no suspicion of her actions. "Bruce," said he, "your honesty has saved the Queen of England. Though Wallace is my enemy, I know him to be of an integrity which neither man nor woman can shake; and therefore," added he, turning to the lords, "I declare before all who have heard me so fiercely arraign my injured wife, that I believe her innocent of every offense against me. And whoever, after this, mentions one word of what has passed in these investigations, or even whispers that they have been held, shall be punished as guilty of high treason."

Bruce was then ordered to be reconducted to the round-tower; and the rest of the lords withdrawing by command, the king was left with Gloucester, his daughter Jane, and the now reviving queen to make his peace with her, even on his knees.

Burce was more closely immured than ever. Not even his senachie was allowed to approach him; and double guards were kept constantly around his prison. On the fourth day of his seclusion an extra row of iron bars was put across his windows. He asked the captain of the party the reason for this new rivet on his captivity; but he received no answer. His own recollection, however, solved the doubt; for he could not but see that his own declaration respecting his friendship with Wallace had increased the alarm of Edward respecting their political views. One of the warders, on having the same inquiry put to him which Bruce had addressed to his superior, in a rough tone replied:

"He had best not ask questions, lest he should hear that his majesty had determined to keep him under Bishop Beck's padlock for life."

Bruce was not to be deprived of hope by a single evidence, and smiling, said:

"There are more ways of getting out of a tyrant's prison, than by the doors and windows!"

"Why, you would not eat through the walls?" cried the man.

"Certainly," replied Bruce, "if I have no other way, and through the guards too."

"We'll see to that," answered the man.

"And feel it too, my sturdy jailer," returned the prince; "so look to yourself."

Bruce threw himself recklessly into a chair as he spoke; while the man, eying him askance, and remembering how strangely the minstrel had disappeared, began to think