Read Ebook: Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 18 by Wilson John Mackay Compiler Leighton Alexander Editor

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 931 lines and 97506 words, and 19 pages

"Alas! noble Wallace, thou sayest too truly," said Sir Thomas; "but yet wouldst thou deem me as worthy of pity as of censure, didst thou but know all, and the remorse I even now endure. For a full year have I determined to quit this wild, unknightly mode of life, and go a pilgrim as of old; not to fight for the sepulchre--for the battles of the Cross are over--not to fight, but to die for it. But I accept, noble champion, this my first defeat on sea, as a message from heaven. Accept of me as true soldier under thee, and I will fight for thee in thy country's quarrel, to the death."

"Most willingly, brave De Longoville," said the Governor, as he raised him from the deck; "Scotland needs sorely the use of such swords as thine."

"And deem not her cause less holy," said the monk--for monk he was, the well-known Chaplain Blair--"deem not her cause less holy than that of the sepulchre itself; nor think that thou shalt eradicate the stain of past dishonour less surely in her battles. The cause of justice, De Longoville, is the cause of God, contend for it where we may."

Wallace returned to De Longoville the sword of which he had so lately disarmed him; and the pirate admiral, on learning that the champion was bound for Rochelle, issued orders to his fleet, which, now that the mist rose, was found to consist of six large vessels, to follow close in their wake. The breeze blew steadily from the north-west, and the ships went careering along, each in her own long furrow of white, towards the port of their destination; the pirate vessels keeping aloof full two bowshots from the Scotsman--for so De Longoville had ordered, to prevent suspicion of treachery. He had set aside his armour, and now appeared to his new associates as a man of noble and knightly bearing, tall and stalwart as any warrior aboard, save the Governor; and, though his hair was blanched around his temples, and indicated the approach of age, the light step and quick sparkling eye gave evidence that his vigour of frame still remained undiminished. He sat apart, with the Governor and his two kinsmen, Clelland and Crawford, in the cabin under the poop. It was a rude, unornamented apartment, as might be expected, from the general appearance of the vessel; but the profusion of arms and pieces of armour which hung from the sides, glittering to the light that found entrance through a casement in the deck, bestowed on the place an air of higher pretension. A table with food and wine was placed before the warriors.

"It is now twenty-six years, or thereby," said De Longoville, "since I quitted Palestine for France, with the good Louis. I had fought by his side on the disastrous field of Massouna, and did all that a man of mould might to rescue him from the Saracens, when he fell into their hands, exhausted by his wounds and his sore sickness. But that day was written a day of defeat and disaster to the soldiers of the Cross. Nor need I say how I took my stand, with the best of my countrymen, on the walls of Damietta, and maintained them for the good cause, despite of the assembled forces of the Moslem, until we had bought back our king from captivity, by yielding up the city we defended for his ransom. It is enough for a disgraced man and a captive to say that my services were not overlooked by those whose notice was most an honour; and that, ere I embarked for France, I received the badge of knighthood from the hand of the good Louis himself.

"My king and friend, the good Louis, had sailed from France for Palestine, on his last hapless voyage, ere I had executed my mission. On my return to France, however, I found a galley of Toulon on the eve of quitting port, to join with his fleet, then on the coast of Africa, and, snatching a hurried interview with the lady of my affections, maugre the vigilance of her relatives, I embarked to fight under Louis, as of old, for the blessed sepulchre. We landed near Tunis, and saw the tents of France glittering to the sun. But all was silent as midnight, and the royal standard hung reversed over the pavilion of the good Louis. He had died that morning of the plague; and his base and cruel brother, the false Charles of Anjou, sat beside the corpse. I felt that I had fallen among my enemies; for though the young King was there, he was weak and inexperienced, and open to the influence of his uncle. The first knight I met, as I entered the camp, was Loithaire of Languedoc--now the wily friend and counsellor of Charles. There were lying witnesses suborned against me, who accused me of the most incredible and unheard-of practices; and of these Loithaire was the chief. 'Twas in vain I demanded the combat, as a test of my innocence. The combat was denied me; my sword was broken before the assembled chivalry of France; my shield reversed; and sentence was passed that I should be burnt at a stake, and my ashes scattered to the four winds of heaven. But it was not written that I should perish so. Scarce an hour before the opening of the day appointed for my execution, I broke from prison, assisted by a brother soldier, whose life I had saved in Palestine, and escaped to France.

"I was a broken and ruined man. But how wondrous the force of true affection! My Agnes knew this; and yet, knowing all, she contrived to elude her guardians, and fled with me to the sea-shore, where we embarked, in a ship of Normandy, for the south of Ireland. From that hour De Longoville has fought under no banner but his own. I renounced, in my anger, my allegiance to my country-nay, declared war with the sovereign who had so injured me. The years passed, and desperate and dishonoured men like myself came flocking to me as their leader, till not Philip himself, or my old enemy Charles, had more kingly authority on land than De Longoville on the sea. But let no man again deceive himself as I have done. I had reasoned on the lax morality and doubtful honour of kings, and asked myself why I might not, as the admiral and prince of my fleet, achieve a less guilty, though not less splendid glory than the bastard William of Normandy, or Edward of England, or my old enemy Charles of Anjou. But I have long since been taught that what were high achievements and honourable conquest in the admiral of a hundred vessels, is but sheer piracy in the captain of six. I can trust, however, that the last days of De Longoville may yet be deemed equal to the first; and that the middle term of his life may be forgiven him for its beginning and its close. Not a month since, I carried my wife and daughter to France, and took final leave of them, with the purpose of setting out on my pilgrimage to Palestine. That intention, noble Wallace! is now altered; and I must again seek them out, that they may accompany me to Scotland."

"The foul stain of treason, brave Longoville, must be removed," said the Governor. "Charles of Anjou has long since gone to his account: does the Lord of Languedoc still survive!"

"He still lives," replied the admiral; "his years do not outnumber my own."

"Then must he either retract the vile calumny, or grant you the combat. The young Philip has pledged his knightly word, when he solicited the visit I am now voyaging to pay him, that he would grant me the first boon I craved in person, should it involve the alienation of his fairest province. That boon, brave De Longoville, will, at least, present you with the means of regaining your fair fame."

De Longoville knelt on the cabin floor, and kissed the hand of the Governor. The conversation glided imperceptibly to other and lighter matters; time passed gaily in the recital of stories of chivalrous endurance or exploit; and the gale, which still blew steadily from the north-west, promised a speedy accomplishment of their voyage. For four days they sailed without shifting back or lowering sail; and, on the morning of the fifth, cast anchor in the harbour of Rochelle.

On the evening of the second day after their arrival, a single knight was pricking his steed through one of the glades of the immense forest which, at this period, covered the greater part of the province of Poitiers. He had been passing, ever since morning, through what seemed an interminable wilderness of wood--here clustered into almost impenetrable thickets shagged with an undergrowth of thorn, there opening into long bosky glades and avenues that seemed, however, only to lead into recesses still more solitary and remote than those that darkened around him. During the early part of the day, the sun had looked down gaily among the trees, checkering the sward below with a carpeting of alternate light and shadow; and the knight, a lover of falconry and the chase, had rode jocundly on through the peopled solitude; ever and anon grasping his spear, with the eager spirit of the huntsman, as the fawn started up beside his courser, and shot like a meteor across the avenue, or the wild boar or wolf rustled in the neighbouring brake. Towards evening, however, the eternal sameness of the landscape had begun to fatigue him; the sun, too, had disappeared, long before his setting, in a veil of impenetrable vapour, mottled with grey, ponderous clouds, betokening an approaching storm; and the horseman pressed eagerly onward, in the hope of reaching, ere its bursting, the hostelry in which he had purposed to pass the evening. He had either, however, mistaken his way or miscalculated his distance; for after passing dell and dingle, glade and thicket, in monotonous succession, for hours on hours, the forest still seemed as dense and unending, and the hostelry as distant as ever. A brown and sleepy horror seemed to settle over the trees as the evening darkened; the thunder began to bellow in long peals, far to the south, and a few heavy drops to patter from time to time on the leaves, giving indication of the approaching deluge. The knight had just resigned himself to encounter all the horrors of the storm, when, on descending into a little bosky hollow, through which there passed a minute streamlet, he found himself in front of a deserted hermitage. It was a cell, opening, like an Egyptian tomb, in the face of a low precipice. A rude stone-cross, tapestried with ivy, rose immediately over the narrow door-way.

It consisted of one small rude apartment, hewn, apparently with immense labour, in the living rock. A seat and bed of stone occupied the opposite sides; and in the extreme end, fronting the door, there was a rude image of the Virgin, with a small altar of mouldering stone, placed before it. The evening was oppressively sultry, and, taking his seat on the bedside, the knight unlaced and set aside his helmet, exhibiting to the fast-dying light, the brown curling hair and handsome features of our old acquaintance Clelland--for it was no other than he. The thunder began to roll in louder and longer peals, and the lightning to illumine, at brief intervals, every glade and dingle without, and every minute object within; when a loud scream of dismay and terror, blent with the infuriated howl of some wild animal, rose from the upper part of the dell, and Clelland had but snatched up his spear and leaped out into the storm, when a young female, closely pursued by an enormous wolf, came rushing down the declivity, in the direction of the hermitage; but, in crossing the little stream, overcome apparently by fatigue and terror, she stumbled and fell. To interpose his person between the poor girl and her ravenous pursuer was with Clelland the work of one moment; to make such prompt and efficient use of his spear that the steel head passed through and through the monster, and then buried itself in the earth beneath, was his employment in the next. The black blood came spouting out along the shaft, crimsoning both his hands to the wrists; and the transfixed savage, writhing itself round on the wood in its mortal agony, and gnashing its immense fangs, just uttered one tremendous howl that could be heard even above the pealing of the thunder, and then belched out his life at his feet. He raised the fallen girl, who seemed for a moment to have sunk into a state of partial swoon, and, disengaging his good weapon from the bleeding carcass, he supported her to the hermitage in the rock.

She was attired in the garb of a common peasant of the age and country; but there was even yet light enough to shew that her beauty was of a more dignified expression than is almost ever to be found in a cottage--exquisite in colour and form as that which we meet with in the latter, may often be. There was a subdued elegance, too, in her few brief, but earnest expressions of gratitude to her deliverer, that consorted equally ill with her attire. On entering the hermitage, she knelt before the altar, and prayed in silence; while Clelland took his seat on the stone couch where he had before placed his helmet, leaving to his new companion the settle on the opposite side. Meanwhile the storm without had increased tenfold. The thunder rolled overhead, peal after peal, without break or pause; so that the outbursting of every fresh clap was mingled with the echoes in which the wide-spread forest had replied to the last. At times, the opposite acclivity, with all its thickets, seemed as if enveloped in an atmosphere of fire--at times one immense seam of forked lightning came ploughing the pitchy gloom of the heavens, from the centre to the horizon. The wild beasts of the forest were abroad. Clelland could hear their fierce howlings mingled with the terrific bellowings of the heavens. The dead sultry calm was suddenly broken. A hurricane went raging through the woods. There was a creaking, crackling, rushing sound among the trees, as they strained and quivered to the blast; and a roaring, like that of some huge cataract, showed that a waterspout had burst in the upper part of the dell, and that the little stream was coming down in thunder--a wide and impetuous torrent. Clelland's fair companion still remained kneeling before the altar. 'Twould seem as her prayer of thanks for her great deliverance had changed into an earnest and oft-reiterated petition for still further protection.

In a pause of the storm, the frightful howlings of a flock of wolves were heard rising from over the hermitage, as if hundreds had assembled on its roof of rock. Clelland sprung from his seat, and, grasping his spear, stood in the doorway.

"We shall have to bide siege," he said to his companion. "I knew not that these fierce creatures mustered so thickly here."

"Heaven be our protection!" said the maiden. "They fill every recess of the forest. I had left my mother's this evening for but an instant--'twas in quest of a tame fawn--when the monster from whose murderous fangs you delivered me, started up between me and my home; and I had to fly from instant destruction into the thick of the forest."

"And so your place of residence is quite at hand?" said Clelland. "In the course of a long day's journey, I have not met with a single human habitation."

"The hermitage," replied the maiden, "is but a short half-mile from my mother's--would that we were but safe there!"

As she spoke, the howling of the wolves burst out again, in frightful chorus, from above, and at least a score of the ravenous animals came leaping down over the rock, brushing in their descent the ivy and the underwood. Clelland couched his spear, so that nothing could enter by the narrow doorway without encountering its sharp point. But the wolves came not to the attack; and their yells and howlings from the hollow of the rock, blent with the terrified snortings and pawings of poor Biscay, shewed that they were bent on an easier conquest, and bulkier, though less noble prey. The animal, in his first struggle, broke loose from his fastenings, and went galloping madly past; and an intensely bright flash of lightning, that illumined the whole scene of terror without, shewed him in the act of straining up the opposite bank, with a huge wolf fastened to his lacerated back, and closely pursued by full twenty more.

It was, in truth, a night of dread and terror. Towards morning, however, the storm gradually sunk into a calm as dead as that which had preceded it, and a clear, starry sky looked down on the again silent forest. The maiden, now that there was less of danger, was rendered thoroughly unhappy by thoughts of her mother. She had left her, she said, but for an instant--left her solitary in her dwelling; and how must she have passed so terrible a night! Clelland strove to quiet her fears. There was a little cloud in the east, he said, already reddening on its lower edge; in an hour longer, it would be broad day, and he could then conduct her to her mother's.

"You have not always worn such a dress as that which you now wear," he continued; "nor have you spent all your days on the edge of the forest. Does your father still live?"

There was a pause for a moment.

"I am a native of France," she at length said; "but I have passed most of my time in other countries. My father, in fulfilment of a vow, is now bound on a pilgrimage to Palestine."

"And may I not crave your name?" asked Clelland.

"My name," she replied, "is Bertha de Longoville. Brave and courtly warrior, but for whose generous and knightly daring I would have found yester-evening a horrid tomb in the ravenous maw of the wolf, do not, I pray you, ask me more. A vow binds me to secrecy for the time."

"Nay, fear not, gentle maiden," said Clelland, "that what you but wish to keep secret, I shall once urge you to reveal. But hear me, lady, and then judge how far I am to be trusted. You are the only daughter of Sir Thomas de Longoville, once a true soldier of the blessed Cross, but, in his latter days, less fortunate in his quarrels. Your father is now in France, and in two weeks hence will be in Paris."

"Saints and angels!" exclaimed the maiden, "he has fallen into the hands of his enemies!"

"Not so, lady; he is among his best friends. The knightly word of Sir William Wallace of Elderslie, who never broke faith with friend or enemy, is pledged for his safe-keeping. With my kinsman, he is secure of at least safety--perhaps even of grace and pardon. But the day has broken, maiden; suffer me to conduct you to your mother's."

They left the hermitage together, and ascended the side of the dell. As they passed the hollow in the rock, a bright patch of blood caught the eye of Clelland.

"Ah, poor Biscay!" he exclaimed; "there is all that now remains of him; and how to procure another steed in this wild district, I know not. My kinsman will be at Paris long ere his herald gets there. Well, there have been greater mishaps. Yonder is the carcass of the wolf I slew yester-evening, half eaten by his savage companions."

The morning, we have said, was calm and still; but the storm of the preceding night had left behind it no doubtful vestiges of its fury. The stream had fallen to its old level, and went tinkling along its channel, with a murmur that only served to shew how complete was the silence; but the banks were torn and hollowed by the recent torrent, and tangled wreaths of brushwood and foliage lay high on the sides of the dell. The broken and ragged appearance of the forest gave evidence of the force of the hurricane. The fallen trees lay thick on the sides of the more exposed acclivities--some reclining like spears, half bent to the charge, athwart the spreading boughs of such of their neighbours as the storm had spared; others lay as if levelled by the woodman, save that their long flexile roots had thrown up vast fragments of turf, resembling the broken ruins of cottages. And, in an opening of the wood, a gigantic oak, the slow growth of centuries, lay scattered over the soil, in raw and splintery fragments, that gave strange evidence of the irresistible force of the agent employed in its destruction. The trees opened as they advanced, and they emerged from the forest as the first beams of the sun had begun to glitter on the topmost boughs. A low, moory plain, walled in by a range of distant hills, and mottled with a few patches of corn, and a few miserable cottages, lay before them. A grey detached tower, somewhat resembling that of an English village church, rose on the forest edge, scarce a hundred yards away.

"Yonder tower, Sir Knight," said the maiden, "is the dwelling of my mother. Alas! what must she not have endured during the protracted horrors of the night!"

"There is, at least, joy waiting her now," said Clelland; "and all will soon be well."

They approached the tower. It was a small and very picturesque erection, of three low stories in height, with projecting turrets at the front corners, connected by a hanging bartizan, over which there rose a sharp serrated gable, to the height of about two stories more. A row of circular shot-holes, and a low, narrow door-way, were the only openings in the lower storey--the few windows in the upper, long and narrow, and scarce equal in size to a Norman shield, were thickly barred with iron. The building had altogether a dilapidated and deserted appearance; for the turrets were broken-edged and mouldering, and some of the large square flags had slidden from off the stone roof, and lay in the moat, which, from a reservoir, had degenerated into a quagmire, mantled over with aquatic plants, and with, here and there, a bush of willow springing out from the sides. A single plank afforded a rather doubtful passage across; and the iron-studded door of the fortalice lay wide open. Clelland hung back as the maiden entered.

"My daughter! my Bertha!" exclaimed a female voice from within; "and do you yet live! and are you again restored to me!"

The Knight entered, and found the maiden in the embrace of her mother.

"That I still live," said Bertha, "I owe it to this brave and courtly knight. But for his generous daring, your daughter would have found strange burial in the ravenous maw of a wolf."

The mother turned round to Clelland, and grasped his mailed hand in both hers.

"The saints be your blessing and reward!" she exclaimed; "for I cannot repay you. God himself be your reward!--for earth bears no price adequate to the benefit. You have restored to the lonely and the broken in spirit her only stay and comfort."

"Nay, madam," said Clelland, "I would have done as much for the meanest serf; for Bertha de Longoville I could have laid down my life."

The mother again grasped his hand. She was a tall and a still beautiful woman, though considerably turned of forty, and though she yet bore impressed on her countenance no unequivocal traces of the distress of the night. She told them of her sufferings; and was made acquainted in turn with the frightful adventure in the hermitage, and, more startling still, with the resolution of her husband to confront his calumniators at the court of France.

"We must set out instantly on our journey to Paris, Bertha," said the matron; "your father, in his imminent peril, must not lack some one, at least to comfort, if not to assist him."

"Nay," said Clelland, "ere your setting out, you must first take rest enough, to recover the fatigues and watching of the night. And, besides, how could two unprotected females travel through such a country as this? Hear me, lady: I was hastening to Paris in advance of my party; but now that I have missed my way and lost my good steed, they will be all there before me. It matters but little. My kinsman can well afford wanting a herald. I shall cast myself on your hospitality for the day; and, to-morrow, should you feel yourself fully recovered, you shall set out for Paris, under such convoy as I can afford you."

Both ladies expressed their warmest gratitude for the kind and generous offer; and there was that in the thanks of the younger which Clelland would have deemed price sufficient for a service much less redolent of pleasure than that he had just tendered. She was in truth one of the loveliest women he had ever seen; tall and graceful, and with a countenance exquisite in form and colour. But, with all of the bodily and the material that constitutes beauty, it was mainly to expression, that index of the soul, that she owed her power. There was a steady light in the dark hazel eye, joined to an air of quiet, unobtrusive self-possession, which seemed to sit on the polished and finely formed forehead, that gave evidence of a strong and equable mind; while the sweet smile that seemed to lurk about the mouth, and the air of softness spread over the lower part of the face, shewed that there mingled with the stronger traits of her character the feminine gentleness and sweetness of disposition, so fascinating in the sex. A little girl from one of the distant cottages entered the building with a milking pail in her hands.

"Ah, my good Annette," said the matron, "you left me by much too soon yester-evening; but it matters not now. You must busy yourself in getting breakfast for us--meanwhile, good Sir Knight, this way. The tower is a wild ruin, but all its apartments are not equally ruinous."

They ascended, by a stair hollowed in the thickness of the wall, to an upper story. There was but one apartment on each floor; so that the entire building consisted but of four, and the two closet-like recesses in the turrets. The apartment they now entered was lined with dark oak; a massy table of the same material occupied the centre; and a row of ponderous stools, like those which Cowper describes in his "Task," ran along the wall. An immense chimney, supported by two rude pillars of stone, and piled with half-charred billets of wood, projected over the floor; the lintel, an oblong tablet about three feet in height, was roughened by uncouth heraldic sculptures of merwomen playing on harps, and two knights in complete armour fronting each other as in the tilt-yard. The windows were small and dark, and barred with iron; and through one of these that opened to the east, the morning sun, now risen half a spear's length over the forest, found entrance, in a square slanting rule of yellow light, which fell on the floor under a square recess in the opposite wall. The little girl entered immediately after the ladies and Clelland, bearing fire and fuel; a cheerful blaze soon roared in the chimney; and, as the morning felt keen and chill after the recent storm, they seated themselves before it. An hour passed in courtly and animated dialogue, and then breakfast was served up.

The younger lady would fain have prolonged the conversation--for it had turned on the struggles of the Scots, and the wonderful exploits of Wallace--had not her mother reminded her that they stood much in need of rest to strengthen them for their approaching journey. They both, therefore, retired to their sleeping apartments in the turrets; while the knight, providing himself with a bow and a few arrows, sallied out into the forest. The practice in woodcraft, which he had acquired under his kinsman, who, in his reverses, could levy on only the woods and moors, stood him in so good stead, that, when dinner-time came round, a noble haunch of venison and two plump pheasants smoked on the board. But Bertha alone made her appearance. Her mother, she said, still felt fatigued, and slightly indisposed; but she trusted to be able to join them in the course of the evening.

There was nothing Clelland had so anxiously wished for, when spending the earlier part of the day in the wood, as some such opportunity of passing a few hours with Bertha. And yet, now that the opportunity had occurred, he scarce knew how to employ it. The radiant smile of the maiden--her light, elegant form, and lovely features--had haunted him all the morning; and he wisely enough thought there could be but little harm in frankly telling her so. But, now that the fair occasion had offered, he found that all his usual frankness had left him, and that he could scarce say anything, even on matters more indifferent. And, what seemed not a little strange, too, the maiden was scarcely more at her ease than himself, and could find not a great deal more to say. Dinner passed almost in silence; and Bertha, rising to the square recess in the wall, drew from it a flagon filled with wine, which she placed before her guest and a vellum volume, bound in velvet and gold.

"This," she said, "is a wonderful romaunt, written by a countryman of yours, of whom I have heard the strangest stories. Can you tell me aught regarding him?"

"Ah!" said the knight, taking up the volume, "the book of Tristram. I am not too young, lady, to have seen the writer--the good Thomas of Erceldoune."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet