The Scottish Chiefs Part 64

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 n.o.bles 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 chast.i.ty 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 pa.s.sions. 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 pa.s.sed 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 st.u.r.dy 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 that some people born in Scotland inherited from nature a necromantic power of executing whatever they determined.

Though careless in his manner of treating the warder's information, Bruce thought of it with anxiety; and lost in reflections, checkered with hope and doubt of his ever effecting an escape, he remained immovable on the spot where the man had left him, till another sentinel brought in a lamp. He set it down in silence, and withdrew; Bruce then heard the bolts on the outside of his chamber pushed into their guards.

"There they go," said he to himself; "and those are to be the morning and evening sounds to which I am to listen all my days! At least Edward would have it so. Such is the grat.i.tude he shows to the man who restored to him his wife; who restored to him the consciousness of possessing that honor unsullied which is so dear to every married man!

Well, Edward, kindness might bind generous minds even to forget their rights; but thanks to you, neither in my own person, nor for any of my name, do I owe you aught, but to behold me King of Scotland; and please G.o.d, that you shall, if the prayers of faith may burst these double-steeled gates, and set me free!"

While invocations to the Power in which he confided, and resolutions respecting the consequences of his hoped-for liberty, by turns occupied his mind, he heard the tread of a foot in the adjoining pa.s.sage. He listened breathless; for no living creature, he thought, could be in that quarter of the building, as he had suffered none to enter it since Wallace had disappeared by that way. He half rose from his couch, as the door at which he had seen him last gently opened. He started up, and Gloucester, with a lantern in his hand, stood before him. The earl put his finger on his lip, and taking Bruce by the hand, led him, as he had done Wallace, down into the vault which leads to Fincklay Abbey.

When safe in that subterraneous cloister, the earl replied to the impatient grat.i.tude of Bruce (who saw that the generous Gloucester meant he should follow the steps of his friend) by giving him a succinct account of his motives for changing his first determination, and now giving him liberty. He had not visited Bruce since the escape of Wallace, that he might not excite any new suspicion in Edward; and the tower being fast locked at every usual avenue, he had now entered it from the Fincklay side. He then proceeded to inform Bruce, that after his magnanimous forgetfulness of his own safety to insure that of the queen had produced a reconciliation between her and her husband, Buchan, Soulis, and Athol, with one or two English lords, joined the next day to persuade the king that Bruce's avowal respecting Wallace had been merely an invention of his own to screen some baser friend and royal mistress. They succeeded in reawakening doubts in Edward, who, sending for Gloucester, said to him, "Unless I could hear from Wallace's own lips (and in my case the thing is impossible), that he has been here, and that my wife is guiltless of this foul stain, I must ever remain in horrible suspense. These base Scots, ever fertile in maddening suggestions, have made me even more suspect that Bruce had other reasons for his apparently generous risk of himself, than a love of justice."

While these ideas floated in the mind of Edward, Bruce had been more closely immured. And Gloucester having received the promised letter from Wallace, determined to lay it before the king. Accordingly, one morning the earl, gliding un.o.bserved into the presence-chamber before Edward was brought in, laid the letter under his majesty's cushion. As Gloucester expected, the moment the king saw the superscription, he knew the hand; and hastily breaking the seal, read the letter twice over to himself without speaking a word. But the clouds which had hung on his countenance all pa.s.sed away; and with a smile reaching the packet to Gloucester, he commanded him to read aloud "that silencer of all doubts respecting the honor of Margaret of France and England."

Gloucester obeyed; and the astonished n.o.bles, looking on each other, one and all a.s.sented to the credit that ought to be given to Wallace's word, and deeply regretted having ever joined in a suspicion against her majesty. Thus, then, all appeared amicably settled. But the embers of discord still glowed. The three Scottish lords, afraid lest Bruce might be again taken into favor, labored to show that his friendship with Wallace, pointed to his throwing off the English yoke, and independently a.s.suming the Scottish crown. Edward required no arguments to convince him of the probability of this; and he readily complied with Bishop Beck's request to allow him to hold the royal youth his prisoner. But when the c.u.mmins won this victory over Bruce, they gained nothing for themselves. During the king's vain inquiries respecting the manner in which Wallace's letter had been conveyed to the apartment, they had ventured to throw hints of Bruce having been the agent, by some secret means, and that however innocent the queen might be, he certainly evinced, by such solicitude for her exculpation, a more than usual interest in her person. These latter innuendoes the king crushed in the first whisper. "I have done enough with Robert Bruce," said he. "He is condemned a prisoner for life, and a mere suspicion shall never provoke me to give sentence for his death."

Irritated by this reply, and the contemptuous glance with which it was accompanied, the vindictive triumvirate turned from the king to the court; and having failed in accomplishing the destruction of Bruce and his more renowned friend, they determined at least to make a wreck of their moral fame. The guilt of Wallace and the queen, and the partic.i.p.ation of Bruce, was now whispered through every circle, and credited in proportion to the evil disposition of the hearers.

Once of his pages at last brought to the ears of the kings the stories which these lords so basely circulated; and sending for them, he gave them so severe a reprimand, that, retiring from his presence with stifled wrath, they agreed to accept the invitation of young Lord Badenoch, return to their country, and support him in the regency.

Next morning Edward was informed they had secretly left Durham; and fearing that Bruce might also make his escape, a consultation was held between the king and Beck of so threatening a complexion, that Gloucester no longer hesitated to run all risks, but immediately to give the Scottish prince his liberty.

Having led him to safety through the vaulted pa.s.sage, they parted in the cemetery of Fincklay; Gloucester, to walk back to Durham by the banks of the Wear; and Bruce, to mount the horse the good earl had left tied to a tree, to convey him to Hartlepool. There he embarked for Normandy.

When he arrived at Caen, he made no delay, but taking a rapid course across the country toward Rouen, on the second evening of his traveling, having pursued his route without sleep, he felt himself so overcome with fatigue, that, in the midst of a vast and dreary plain, he found it necessary to stop for rest at the first habitation he might find. It happened to be the abode of one of those poor, but pious matrons, who, attaching themselves to some neighboring order of charity, live alone in desert places for the purpose of succoring distressed travelers. Here Bruce found the widow's cruse, and a pallet to repose his weary limbs.

Chapter LXI.

Normandy.

Wallace, having separated from the Prince Royal of France, pursued his solitary way toward the capital of Normandy, till night overtook him ere he was aware. Clouds so obscured the sky, that not a star was visible; and his horse, terrified at the impenetrable darkness, and the difficulties of the path, which lay over a barren and stony moor, suddenly stopped. This aroused Wallace from a long fit of musing to look around him; but on which side lay the road to Rouen, he could form no guess. To pa.s.s the night in so exposed a spot might be dangerous, and spurring the animal, he determined to push onward.

He had ridden nearly another hour, when the dead silence of the scene was broken by the roll of distant thunder. Then forked lightning shooting from the horizon showed a line of country unmarked by any vestige of human habitation. Still he proceeded. The storm approached, till, breaking in peals over his head, it discharged such sheets of livid fire at his feet that the horse reared, and plunging amidst the blaze, flashed the light of his rider's armor on the eyes of a troop of hors.e.m.e.n, who also stood under the tempest, gazing with affright at the scene. Wallace, by the same transitory illumination, saw the travelers, as they seemed to start back at his appearance; and, mistaking their apprehension, he called to them, that his well-managed, though terrified steed, would do theirs no harm. One of them advanced and respectfully inquired of him the way to Rouen. Wallace replied that he was a stranger in this part of the country, and was also seeking that city. While he was yet speaking the thunder became more tremendous, and the lightning rolled in volumes along the ground, the horses of the troop became restive, and one of them threw its rider.

Cries of lamentation, mingling with the groans of the fallen person, excited the compa.s.sion of Wallace. He rode toward the spot from when the latter proceeded, and asked the nearest bystander (for several had alighted) whether the unfortunate man was much hurt. The answer returned was full of alarm for the sufferer, and anxiety to obtain some place of shelter, for rain began to fall. In a few minutes it increased to torrents, and the lightning ceasing, deepened the horrors of the scene by preventing the likelihood of discovering any human abode. The men gathered round their fallen companion bewailing the prospect of his perishing under these inclemencies; but Wallace cheered them by saying he would seek a shelter for their friend, and blow his bugle when he had found one. With the word he turned his horse, and as he galloped along, called aloud on any Christian man who might live near, to open his doors to a dying traveler! After riding about in all directions, he saw a glimmering light for a moment, and then all was darkness; but again he called aloud for charity! and a shrill female voice answered, "I am a lone woman, with already one poor traveler in my house; but, for the Virgin's sake, I will open my door to you, whatever you may be." The good woman relighted her lamp, which the rain had extinguished; and, on her unlatching the door, Wallace briefly related what had happened, entreating her permission to bring the unfortunate person into the cottage. She readily consented; and giving him a lantern to guide his way, he blew his bugle, which was instantly answered by so glad and loud a shout that it a.s.sured him his companions could not be far distant, and that he must have made many a useless circuit before he had stopped at this charitable door.