The Scottish Chiefs Part 85

In this frantic adjuration, Gloucester discovered the gallant Bruce.

And hastening toward him to prevent his apparently determined exposure of himself, with a few words he dismissed the officer and his guard; and then, turning to the warden, "Sir Edward," said he, "this stranger is not less my friend than he that was Sir William Wallace!"

"Then far be it from me, earl, to denounce him to our enraged monarch.

I have seen enough of n.o.ble blood shed already. And though we, the subjects of King Edward, may not call your late friend a martyr, yet we must think his country honored in so steady a patriot, and may surely wish we had many the like in our own!" With these words the worthy old knight bowed and withdrew.

Bruce, who had hardly heard the observation of the warden, on his departure turned upon the earl, and, with a bursting heart, exclaimed:

"Tell me, is it true? Am I so lost a wretch as to be deprived of my best, my dearest friend? And is it true, as I am told, that every infernal rigor of the sentence has been executed on that brave and breathless body! Answer me to the fact, that I may speedily take my course!"

Alarmed at the direful expression of his countenance, with a quivering lip, but in silence, Gloucester laid his hand upon his arm. Bruce too well understood what he durst not speak, and, shaking it off, frantically:

"I have no friend!" cried he. "Wallace! my dauntless, my only Wallace, thou art rifled from me! And shall I have fellowship with these? No, all mankind are my enemies, and soon will I leave their detested sojourn!"

Gloucester attempted to interrupt him; but he broke out afresh and with redoubled violence:

"And you, earl," cried he, "lived in this realm, and suffered such a sacrilege on G.o.d's most perfect work! Ungrateful, worthless man! fill up the measure of your baseness; deliver me to Edward, and let me brave him to his face. Oh! let me die, covered with the blood of thy enemies, my murdered Wallace! my more than brother, that shall be the royal robe thy Bruce will bring to thee!"

Gloucester stood in dignified forbearance under the invectives and stormy grief of the Scottish prince; but when exhausted nature seemed to take rest in momentary silence, he approached him. Bruce cast on him a lurid glance of suspicion.

"Leave me!" cried he; "I hate the whole world, and you the worst in it; for you might have saved him, and you did not--you might have preserved his sacred limbs from being made the gazing-stock of traitors, and you did not. Away from me, apt son of a tyrant, lest I tear you in piecemeal!"

"By the heroic spirit of him whom this outrage on me dishonors, hear my answer, Bruce! And, if not on this spot, let me then exculpate myself by the side of his body, yet uninvaded by a sacrilegious touch."

"How?" interrupted Bruce. Gloucester continued:

"All that was mortal in our friend now lies in a distant chamber of this quadrangle. When I could not prevail on Edward, either by entreaty or reproaches, to remit the last gloomy vengeance of tyrants, I determined to wrest its object from his hands. A notorious murderer died yesterday under the torture. After the inanimate corpse of our friend was brought into this house, to be conveyed to the scene of its last horrors, by the a.s.sistance of the warden the malefactor's body was conveyed here also, and placed on the traitor's sledge, in the stead of his who was no traitor, and on that murderer most justly fell the rigor of so dreadful a sentence."

The whole aspect of Bruce changed during this explanation, which was followed by a brief account from Gloucester of their friend's heroic suffering and death.

"Can you pardon my reproaches to you?" cried the prince, stretching out his hand. "Forgive, generous Gloucester, the distraction of a severely wounded spirit!"

This pardon was immediately accorded; and Bruce impetuously added:

"Lead me to these dear remains, that with redoubled certainty I may strike his murderer's heart! I came to succor him. I now stay to die--but not unrevenged!"

"I will lead you," returned the earl, "where you shall learn a different lesson. His soul will speak to you by the lips of his bride, now watching by those sacred relics. Feeble is now her lamp of life; but a saint's vigilance keeps it burning, till it may expire in the grave with him she so chastely loved."

A few words gave Bruce to understand that he meant Lady Helen Mar; and with a deepened grief when he heard in what an awful hour their hands were plighted, he followed his conductor through the quadrangle.

When Gloucester gently opened the door, which contained the remains of the bravest and the best, Bruce stood for a moment on the threshold.

At the further end of the apartment, lighted by a solitary taper, lay the body of Wallace on a bier, covered with a soldier's cloak.

Kneeling by its side, with her head on its bosom, was Helen. Her hair hung disordered over her shoulders, and shrouded with its dark locks the marble features of her beloved. Bruce scarcely breathed. He attempted to advance, but he staggered and fell against the wall. She looked up at the noise; but her momentary alarm ceased when she saw Gloucester. He spoke in a tender voice.

"Be not agitated, lady; but here is the Earl of Carrick."

"Nothing can agitate me more," replied she, turning mournfully toward the prince; who, raised from his momentary dizziness, beheld her regarding him with the look of one already an inhabitant of the grave.

"Helen!" faintly articulated Bruce; "I come to share your sorrows, and to avenge them."

"Avenge them!" repeated she, after a pause; "is there aught in vengeance that can awaken life in these cold veins again? Let the murderers live in the world they have made a desert by the destruction of its brightest glory, and then our home will be his tomb!" Again she bent her head upon Wallace's cold breast; and seemed to forget that she had been spoken to--that Bruce was present.

"May I not look upon him?" cried he, grasping her hand. "Oh! Helen, show me that heroic face from whose beams my heart first caught the fire of virtue!" She moved; and the clay-hued features of all that was ever perfect in manly beauty met his sight. But the bright eyes were shut; the radiance of his smile was dimmed in death, yet still that smile was there. Bruce precipitated his lips to his, and sinking on his knees, remained in a silence only broken by his sighs.

It was an awful and heart-breaking pause, for the voice which in all scenes of weal or woe had ever mingled sweetly with theirs, was silent.

Helen, who had not wept since the tremendous hour of the morning, now burst into an agony of tears; and the vehemence of her feelings tearing so delicate a frame (now rendered weak unto death by a consuming sickness, which her late exertions and present griefs had made seize on her very vitals), seemed to threaten the immediate extinction of her being. Bruce, aroused by her smothered cries, as she lay almost expiring, upheld by Gloucester, hurried to her side. By degrees she recovered to life and observance; but finding herself removed from the bier, she sprang wildly toward it. Bruce caught her arm to support her tottering steps. She looked steadfastly at him, and then at the motionless body. "He is there," cried she, "and yet he speaks not! He soothes not my grief--I weep, and he does not comfort me! And there he lies! O! Bruce, can this be possible? Do I really see him dead? And what is death?" added she, grasping the cold hand of Wallace to her heart. "Didst thou not tell me, when this hand pressed mine and blessed me, that it was only a translation from grief to joy? And is it not so, Bruce? Behold how we mourn and he is happy! I will obey thee, my immortal Wallace!" cried she, casting her arms about him; "I will obey thee, and weep no more!"

She was silent and calm. And Bruce, kneeling on the opposite side of his friend, listened, without interrupting him, to the arguments which Gloucester adduced to persuade him to abstain from discovering himself to Edward, or even uttering resentment against him till he could do both as became the man for whom Wallace had sacrificed so much, even till he was King of Scotland. "To that end," said Gloucester, "did this gallant chieftain live. For, in restoring you to the people of Scotland, he believed he was setting a seal to their liberties and their peace. To that end did he die, and in the direful moment, uttered prayers for your establishment. Think then of this, and let him not look down from his heavenly dwelling and see that Bruce despises the country for which he bled; that the now only hope of Scotland has sacrificed himself in a moment of inconsiderate revenge to the cruel hand which broke his dauntless heart!"

Bruce did not oppose this counsel; and as the fumes of pa.s.sion pa.s.sed away, leaving a manly sorrow to steady his determination of revenge, he listened with approbation, and finally resolved, whatever violence he might do his nature, not to allow Edward the last triumph of finding him in his power.

The earl's next essay was with Helen. He feared that a rumor of the stranger's indignation at the late execution, and that the Earl of Gloucester had taken him in charge, might, when a.s.sociated with the fact of the widow of Sir William Wallace still remaining under his protection, awaken some dangerous suspicion and direct investigations, too likely to discover the imposition he had put on the executioners of the last clause in his royal father's most iniquitous sentence. He therefore explained his new alarm to Helen, and conjured her, if she would yet preserve the hallowed remains before her from any chance of violence (which her lingering near them might induce by attracting notice to her movements), she must consent to immediately leave the kingdom. The valiant and ever faithful heart of Wallace should be her companion; and an English captain, who had partaken of his clemency at Berwick, be her trusty conductor to her native land. To meet every objection, he added, "Bruce shall be protected by me with strict fidelity till some safe opportunity may offer for his bearing to Scotland the sacred corpse that must ever be considered the most precious relic in his country."

"As Heaven wills the trials of my heart," returned she, "so let it be!"

and bending her aching head on the dear pillow of her rest--the bosom which, though cold and deserted by its heavenly inhabitant, was still the bosom of her Wallace! the ravaged temple rendered sacred by the footsteps of a G.o.d! For, had not virtue, and the soul of Wallace, dwelt there? and where virtue is, there abides the Spirit of the Holy One! With these thoughts, she pa.s.sed the remainder of the night in vigils; and they were not less devoutly shared by the chastened heart of the Prince of Scotland.

Chapter Lx.x.xVI.

Highgate.

The tidings of the dreadful vengeance which Edward had taken against the Scottish nation, by pouring all his wrath upon the head of Wallace, struck like the lightning of heaven through the souls of men. None of either country, but those in the confidence of Gloucester, knew that Heaven had s.n.a.t.c.hed him from the dishonor of so vile a death. The English turned, blushing, from each other, and ventured not to breathe the name of a man whose virtues seemed to have found a sanctuary for his fame in every honest heart. But when the news reached Scotland, the indignation was general. All envyings, all strifes were forgotten, in unqualified resentment of the deed. There was not a man, even amongst the late refractory chiefs, excepting the c.u.mmins, and their coadjutors Soulis and Monteith, who really had believed that Edward seriously meant to sentence the Scottish patriot to a severer fate than what he had p.r.o.nounced against his rebellious va.s.sal, the exiled Baliol. The execution of Wallace, whose offense could only be that of having served his country too faithfully, was therefore so unexpected, that on the first promulgation of it, so great an abhorrence of the perpetrator was excited in every breast, that the whole country rose as one man, threatening to march instantly to London, and sacrifice the tyrant on his throne.

At this crisis, when the mountains of the north seemed heaving from their base, to overwhelm the blood-stained fields of England, every heart which secretly rejoiced in the late sanguinary event quailed within its possessor, as it tremblingly antic.i.p.ated the consequences of the fall of Wallace. At this instant, when the furies armed every clan in Scotland, breathing forth revenge like a consuming fire before them, John c.u.mmin, the regent, stood aghast. He foresaw his own downfall, in this reawakened enthusiasm respecting the man whom his treachery had been the first means of betraying to his enemies. Baffled in the aim of his ambition by the very means he had taken to effect it, c.u.mmin saw no alternative, but to throw himself at once upon the bounty of England; and, to this purpose, he bethought him of the only chance of preserving the power of past events, that this tempest of the soul--excited by remorse in some, and grat.i.tude in others--could only be maintained to any conclusive injury to England, by a royal hand, and that that hand was expected to be Bruce's, he determined at once, that the prince to whom he had sworn fealty, and to whom he owed his present elevation, should follow the fate of his friend. By the spies which he constantly kept round Huntingtower, he was apprised that Bruce had set off toward London in a vessel from Dundee. On these grounds, he sent a dispatch to King Edward, informing him that destiny had established him supreme lord of Scotland; for not its second and its last hope had put himself into his hands. With this intelligence, he gave a particular account of all Bruce's proceedings, from the time of his meeting Wallace in France, to his present following the chief to London. He then craved his majesty's pardon for having been betrayed into a union with such conspirators; and repeating his hope that the rest.i.tution he now made, in thus showing the royal hand where to find its last opponent, would give full conviction of his penitence and duty. He closed his letter by urging the king to take instant and effectual measures to disable Bruce from disturbing the quiet of Scotland, or ever again disputing his regal claims!

Gloucester happened to be in the presence when this epistle was delivered in and read by his majesty. On the suit of his daughter, Edwin had been reconciled to his son-in-law; but when he showed him the contents of c.u.mmin's letter, with a suspicious smile he said in a loud voice, "In case you should know this new rebel's lurking-place, presume not to leave this room till he is brought before me. See to your obedience, Ralph, or your head shall follow Wallace's."

The king instantly withdrew, and the earl, aware that search would be made through all his houses, sought in his own mind for some expedient to apprise Bruce of his danger. To write in the presence=chamber was impossible; to deliver a message in a whisper would be hazardous--for most of the surrounding courtiers, seeing the frown with which the king had left the apartment, marked the commands he gave the marshal: "Be sure that the Earl of Gloucester quits not this room till I return."

In the confusion of his thoughts, the earl turned his eye on Lord Montgomery, who had only arrived that very morning from an emba.s.sy to Spain. He had heard with unutterable horror the fate of Wallace; and extending his interest in him to those whom he loved, had arranged with Gloucester to accompany him that very evening to pledge his friendship to Bruce. To Montgomery, then, as to the only man acquainted with his secret, he turned; and taking his spurs off his feet, and pulling out a purse of gold, he said aloud, and with as easy an air as he could a.s.sume, "Here, my Lord Montgomery, as you are going directly to Highgate, I will thank you to call at my lodge; put these spurs and this purse into the hands of the groom we spoke of; tell him they do not fit me, and he will know what use to make of them." He then turned negligently on his heel, and Montgomery quitted the apartment.

The apprehension of this young lord was not less quick than the invention of his friend. He guessed that the Scottish prince was betrayed; and to render his escape the less likely to be traced (the ground being wet, and liable to retain impression), before he went to the lodge he dismounted in the adjoining wood, and with his own hands reversed the iron on the feet of the animal he had provided for Bruce.

He then proceeded to the house, and found the object of his mission disguised as a Carmelite, and in the chapel paying his vesper adorations to the Almighty Being on whom his whole dependence hung.

Uninfluenced by the robes he wore, his was the devotion of the soul; and not unaptly at such an hour came one to deliver him from a danger which, unknown to himself, was then within a few minutes of seizing its prey.

Montgomery entered; and being instantly recognized by Bruce, the ingenuous prince, never doubting a n.o.ble heart, stretched out his hand to him. "I take it," returned the earl, "only to give it a parting grasp. Behold these spurs and purse sent to you by Gloucester. You know their use. Without further observation follow me." Montgomery was thus abrupt, because as he left the palace he had heard the marshal give orders for different military detachments to search every residence of Gloucester for the Earl of Carrick; and he did not doubt that the party dispatched to Highgate were now mounting the hill.

Bruce, throwing off his ca.s.sock and cowl, again appeared in his martial garb, and after bending his knee for a moment on the chancel-stone which covered the remains of Wallace, he followed his friend from the chapel, and thence through a solitary path to the park, to the center of the wood. Montgomery pointed to the horse. Bruce grasped the hand of his faithful conductor. "I go, Montgomery," said he, "to my kingdom. But its crown shall never clasp my brows till the remains of Wallace return to their country. And whether peace or the sword restore them to Scotland, still shall a king's, a brother's friendship unite my heart to Gloucester and to you." While speaking he vaulted into his saddle, and receiving the cordial blessings of Montgomery, touched his good steed with his pointed rowels, and was out of sight in an instant.

Chapter Lx.x.xVII.

Scotland--Dumfries.