The Scottish Chiefs by Jane Porter (novels to read for beginners txt) 📖

the first injury committed on the constitution, and it prepared a path for the ensuing tyranny which seized upon the kingdom. But, by resuming these rights, which is now my firm purpose, I open to you a way to recover our hereditary independence. The direful scene just acted on the Tower Hill of London, that horrible climax of Scottish treason! must convince every reasonable mind that all the late misfortunes of our country have proceeded from the base jealousies of its nobles. There, then, let them die; and may the grave of Wallace be the tomb of dissension! Seeing where their own true interests point, surely the brave chieftains of this land will rally round their lawful prince, who here declares he knows no medium between death and victory!"

The spirit with which this address was pronounced, the magnanimity it conveyed, assisted by the graces of his youth, and noble deportment, struck the hearts of its auditors, and aroused in double vigor the principles of resentment to which the first tidings of their heroic countryman's fate had given birth. Kirkpatrick needed no other stimulus than his almost idolatrous memory of Wallace, and he listened with an answering ardor to Bruce's exhortation. The prince next disclosed to his now zealously-pledged friends the particulars of the Red Cummin's treachery. "He now lies at Dumfries!" cried Kirkpatrick; "thither, then, let us go, and confront him with his treason. When falsehood is to be confounded, it is best to grapple with the sorceress in the moment of detection; should we hesitate, she may elude our grasp."

Dumfries was only a few miles distant, and they might reach its convent before the first matins. Fatigue was not felt by Bruce when in pursuit of a great object; and, after a slight refreshment, he and his four determined friends took horse.

As they had anticipated, the midnight bell was ringing for prayers when the troop stopped at the Franciscan gate. Lindsay, having been in the Holy Land during the late public struggles, alleged business with the abbot, and desired to see him. On the father's bidding the party welcome, Bruce stepped forward and addressed him: "Reverend sir, I come from London. I have an affair to settle with Lord Badenoch; and I know by his letters to King Edward, that he is secretly lodged in this convent. I therefore command to be conducted to him." This peremptory requisition, with the superior air of the person who made it, did not leave the abbot room to doubt that he was some illustrious messenger from the King of England, and with hardly a demur, he left the other knights in the cloisters of the church while he led the noble Southron (as he thought) to his kinsman.

The treacherous regent had just retired from the refectory to his own apartment, as the abbot conducted the stranger into his presence. Badenoch started frowningly from his seat at such unusual intrusion. Bruce's visor was closed; and the ecclesiastic, perceiving the regent's displeasure, dispersed it by announcing the visitant as a messenger from King Edward. "Then leave us together," returned he, unwilling that even this, his convenient kinsman, should know the extent of his treason against his country. The abbot had hardly closed the door, when Bruce, whose indignant soul burned to utter his full contempt of the wretch before him, hastily advanced to speak; but the cautious Badenoch, fearful that the father might yet be within hearing, put his finger to his lips. Bruce paused, and listened gloomily to the departing steps of the abbot. When they were no more heard, with one hand raising his visor, and the other grasping the scroll of detection: "Thus, basest of the base race of Cummin!" exclaimed he, "you may for a moment elude the universal shame which awaits your crimes."

At sight of the fate, on hearing the words of Bruce, the unmanly coward uttered a cry of terror, and rushed toward the door.

"You pass not here," continued the prince, "till I have laid open all your guilt; till I have laid open all your guilt; till I have pronounced you the doom due to a treacherous friend and traitorous subject."

"Infatuated Bruce!" exclaimed Badenoch, assuming an air of insulted friendship, not that he found escape impossible; "what false tongue has persuaded you to arraign one who has ever been but too faithfully the adherent of your desperate fortunes? I have labored in secret, day and night, in your service, and thus am I repaid."

Bruce smiled disdainfully at this poor attempt to deceive him; and, as he stood with his back against the door, he opened the murderous packet, and read from it all its contents. Cummin turned pale and red at each sentence; and at last, Bruce closing it:

"Now, then, faithful adherent of Robert Bruce!" cried he, "say what the man deserves who, in these blood-red lines, petitions the death of his lawful prince! Oh! thou arch-regicide! Doth not my very look kill thee?"

Badenoch, his complexion turning of a livid hue, and his voice faltering, attempted to deny the letter having been his handwriting, or that he had any concern in the former embassy to Edward; then, finding that these falsehoods only irritated Bruce to higher indignation, and fearful of being immediately sacrificed to his just resentment, he threw himself on his knees, and confessing each transaction, implored his life in pity to the natural desire of self-preservation which, alone, had precipitated him to so ungrateful a proceeding.

"Oh!" added he, "even this danger I have incurred upon your account! For your ultimate advantage did I bring on my head the perils which now fill me with dismay! Love alone for you made me hasten the execution of William Wallace, that insidious friend, who would have crept from your bosom into your throne. And then, fear of your mistaking the motives of so good a service, betrayed me to throw myself into the arms of Edward!"

"Bury thyself and crimes, thou foulest traitor, deep in the depths of hell!" cried the prince, starting away with a tremendous gesture! "Out of my sight forever, that I may not pollute these hands with thy monstrous blood!" Till this moment Bruce was ignorant that Badenoch had been the instigator in the murder of Wallace; and forgetting all his own person wrongs in this more mighty injury, with tumultuous horror, he turned from the coward to avoid the self-blame of stabbing an unarmed wretch at his feet. But at that moment Cummin, who believed his doom only suspended, rose from his knee, and drawing his dirk from under his plaid, struck it into the back of the prince. Bruce turned on him with the quickness of thought. "Hah!" exclaimed he, seizing him by the throat, "then take thy fate! This accursed deed hath removed the only barrier between vengeance and thee—thus remember William Wallace!"

As the prince spoke he plunged his dagger into the breast of the traitor. Cummin uttered a fearful cry, and rolled down at his feet murmuring imprecations.

Bruce fled from the spot. It was the first time his arm had drawn blood except in the field of battle, and he felt as if the base tide had contaminated his hand. In the cloisters he was encountered by his friends. A few words informed them of what had happened.

"Is he dead?" inquired Kirkpatrick.

"I can hardly doubt it," answered Bruce.

"Such a matter," returned the veteran, "must not be left to conjecture; I will secure him!"** And running forward, he found the wounded regent crawling from the door of the cell. Throwing himself upon him without noise, he stabbed him to the heart.

**In memory of this circumstance, the crest of the family of Kirkpatrick is a hand grasping a dagger distilling gouts of blood; the motto, "I mak sikkar."

Before the catastrophe was known in the convent, Bruce and his friends had left it some time, and were far on their road to Lochmaben. They arrived before sunrise, and once more an inmate of his paternal castle, he thence dispatched Fleming to Lord Ruthven, with a transcript of his designs.

In the same packed he inclosed a letter for the Lady Isabella. It contained this brave resolution—that, in his present return to Scotland, he did not consider himself merely as Robert Bruce, come to reclaim the throne of his ancestors, but as the executor of the last dying will of Sir William Wallace, which was—that Bruce should confirm the independence of Scotland, or fall, as Wallace had done, invincible at his post. "Till that freedom is accomplished," continued the virtuous prince, "I will never shake the steadfast purpose of my soul by even once glance at thy life-endearing beauties. I am Wallace's soldier, Isabella, as he was Heaven's! and, while my captain looks on me from above, shall I not approve myself worthy his example? I wooed you as a knight, I will win you as a king; and on the day when no hostile Southron breathes in Scotland I will demand my sweetest reward, my beloved bride, of her noble uncle. You shall come to me as the angel of peace, and in one hour we will receive the nuptial benediction and the vows of our people!"

The purport of the prince's letter to Ruthven was well adapted to the strain of the foregoing. He then announced his intention of proceeding immediately to the plain of Stirling; and there, putting himself at the head of his loyal Scots, declare himself their lawful sovereign, and proclaim to the world that he acknowledged no legal superior but the Great Being whose vicegerent he was. From that center of his kingdom he would make excursions to its furthest extremities, and, with God's will, either drive his enemies from the country, or perish with the sword in his hand, as became the descendant of William the Lion, as became the friend of William Wallace!

Ruthven lay encamped on the Carse of Gowrie when this letter was delivered to him. He read it aloud to his assembled chieftains, and, with waving bonnets, they hailed the approach of their valiant prince. Bothwell alone, whose soul-devoted attachment to Wallace could not be superseded by any other affection allowed his bonnet to remain inactive in his hand; but with the ferver of true loyalty he thanked God for thus bringing the sovereign whom his friend loved to bind in one the contending interests of his country—to wrest from the hand of that friend's assassin the scepter for which he had dyed them so deep in blood.

Chapter LXXXVIII.

Stirling.

The word of Bruce was as irreversible as his spirit was determined. No temptation of indulgence could seduce him from the one, no mischance of adversity could subdue the other. The standard of liberty had been raised by him on the Carse of Gowrie, and he carried it in his victorious arm from east to west, from the most northern point of Sutherland to the walls of Stirling; but there, the garrison which the treason of the late regent had admitted into the citadel gave a momentary check to his career. The English governor hesitated to surrender on the terms proposed, and while his first flag of truce was yet in the tent of the Scottish monarch, a second arrived to break off the negotiation. Whatever were the reasons for this abrupt determination, Bruce paid him not the compliment of asking a wherefore, but advancing his troops to the Southron outposts, drove them in with great loss; and, approaching the lower works of the town by the road of Ballochgeich, so alarmed the governor as to induce him to send forth several squadrons of horse to stop his progress.

Vain was the attempt. They shrunk before the resolute prince and his enthusiastic followers. The governor dispatched others, and at last marched himself out to their support. No force seemed able to withstand the pressing valor of the Scots. The Southron saw himself in the midst of his slain, and deserted by half of his surviving troops. A surrender, both of himself and his fainting companions, was now his only recourse. His herald sounded a parley. The generous victor, in the midst of triumph, listened to the offered capitulation. It was not to include the citadel of Stirling.

Bruce stopped the herald at this clause, and at once demanded the unconditional surrender of both the town and citadel. The governor, being aware that in his present state there was no alternative, and knowing the noble nature of