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ON the evening of the fatal
day, in which the sun of William Wallace had set for ever on his country,
the Earl of Gloucester was imparting to the warden of the Tower his last
directions respecting the sacred remains, when the door of the chamber
suddenly opened, and a file of soldiers entered. A man in armour, with his
visor closed, was in the midst of them. The captain of the band told the
warden, that the person before him had behaved in a most seditious manner.
He first demanded admittance into the Tower; then, on the sentinel making
answer, that, in consequence of the recent execution of the Scottish
chief, orders had been given "to allow no strangers to approach the
gates till the following morning," he, the prisoner, burst into a
passionate emotion; uttering such threats against the King of England,
that the captain thought it his duty to have him seized, and brought
before the warden.
On the entrance of the soldiers,
Gloucester had retired into the shadow of the room. He turned round, on
hearing these particulars. When the captain ceased speaking, the stranger
fearlessly threw up his visor, and exclaimed, "Take me, not to your
warden alone, but to your king— let me pierce his conscience, with his
infamy:—would it were to stab him ere I die !"
In this frantic adjuration,
Gloucester discovered the gallant Bruce. And hastening towards 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 noble 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 honoured in so steady a patriot; and
may surely wish, we had many the like in our own!" [This
sentiment, with regard to the Scottish hero, is given in Speed’s
History.—(1809.)] 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, as I
am told, that every infernal rigour 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 of franticly, "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 God’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 piece
meal!"—"By the heroic spirit of him whom this outrage on me
dishonours, 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 corse of our friend was brought into this
house, to be conveyed to the scene of its last horrors; by the assistance
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 rigour 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 sufferings 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 succour 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, lit 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 towards 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 on him!"
cried he, grasping her hand: "O! - 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 a
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 sprung wildly towards 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
transIation 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 passion passed away, leaving a manly sorrow to steady
his determination of revenge, he listened with approbation; and finally
resolved, whatever violence he might do to 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 rumour of the stranger’s indignation at the
late execution, and that the Earl of Gloucester had taken him in charge,
might, when associated 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 movemnents,) 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 habitant, was still the bosom of her Wallace! the
ravaged temple rendered sacred by the footsteps of a god! 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 passed
the remainder of the night in vigils;—and they were not less devoutly
shared by the chastened heart of the Prince of Scotland.
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