The Scottish Chiefs

by Jane Porter

  Chapter XXIII.

  The Fortress.

  Kirkpatrick, Murray, and Scrymgeour hastened to their commander; and ina few minutes all were under arms. Wallace briefly explained hisaltered plan of assault, and marshaling his men accordingly, led themin silence through the water, and along the beach, which lay betweenthe rock and the Leven. Arriving at the base just as the moon set,they began to ascend. To do this in the dark redoubled the difficulty;but as Wallace had the place of every accessible stone accuratelydescribed to him by Edwin, he went confidently forward, followed by hisLanarkmen.

  He and they, being the first to mount, fixed and held the tops of thescaling-ladders, while Kirkpatrick and Scrymgeour, with their men,gradually ascended, and gained the bottom of the wall. Here, plantingthemselves in the crannies of the rock, under the impenetrable darknessof the night (for the moon had not only set, but the stars wereobscured by clouds), they awaited the signal for the final ascent.

  Meanwhile, Edwin led Lord Andrew with his followers, and the Frasermen, round by the western side to mount the watchtower rock, and seizethe few soldiers who kept the beacon. As a signal of having succeeded,they were to smother the flame on the top of the tower, and thencedescend toward the garrison to meet Wallace before the prison of theEarl of Mar.

  While the men of Lanark, with their eyes fixed on the burning beacon,in deadly stillness watched the appointed signal for the attack,Wallace, by the aid of his dagger, which he struck into the firm soilthat occupied the cracks in the rock, drew himself up almost parallelwith the top of the great wall, which clasped the bases of the twohills. He listened; not a voice was to be heard in the garrison of allthe legions he had so lately seen glittering on its battlements. Itwas an awful pause.

  Now was the moment when Scotland was to make her first essay forfreedom! Should it fail, ten thousand bolts of iron would be added toher chains! Should it succeed, liberty and happiness were the almostcertain consequences.

  He looked up, and fixing his eyes on the beacon-flame, thought he sawthe figures of men pass before it--the next moment all was darkness. Hesprung on the walls, and feeling by the touch of hands about his feetthat his brave followers had already mounted their ladders, he graspedhis sword firmly, and leaped down on the ground within. In that momenthe struck against the sentinel, who was just passing, and by theviolence of the shock struck him to the earth; but the man, as he fell,catching Wallace round the waist, dragged him after him, and with avociferous cry, shouted "Treason!"

  Several sentinels ran with leveled pikes to the spot, the adjacentturrets emptied themselves of their armed inhabitants, and allassaulted Wallace, just as he had extricated himself from the grasp ofthe prostrate soldier.

  "Who are you?" demanded they.

  "Your enemy;" and the speaker fell at his feet with one stroke of hissword.

  "Alarm!-treason!" resounded from the rest as they aimed their randomstrokes at the conquering chief. But he was now assisted by thevigorous army of Ker, and of several Lanarkmen, who, having cleared thewall, were dealing about blows in the darkness, which filled the airwith groans, and strewed the ground with the dying and the dead.

  One or two Southrons, whose courage was not equal to their caution,fled to arouse the garrison, and just as the whole of Wallace's menleaped the wall and rallied to his support, the inner ballium gateburst open, and a legion of foes, bearing torches, issued to thecontest. With horrible threatenings, they came on, and by a rapidmovement surrounded Wallace and his little company. But his soulbrightened in danger, and his men warmed with the same spirit, stoodfirm with fixed pikes, receiving without injury the assault. Theirweapons being longer than their enemy's, the Southrons, not aware ofthe circumstance, rushed upon their points, incurring the death theymeant to give. Seeing their consequent disorder, Wallace ordered thepikes to be dropped, and his men to charge sword in hand. Terrible wasnow the havoc, for the desperate Scots, grapling each to his foe with afatal hold, let not go till the piercing shriek, or the agonized groan,convinced him that death had seized its victim. Wallace fought infront, making a dreadful passage through the falling ranks, while thetremendous sweep of his sword, flashing in the intermitting light,warned the survivors where the avenging blade would next descend. Ahorrid vacuity was made in the lately thronged spot; it seemed not theslaughter of a mortal arm, but as if the destroying angel himself werethere, and with one blast of his desolating brand, had laid all inruin. The platform was cleared, and the fallen torches, somehalf-extinguished, and other flaming on the ground by the sides of thedead, showed, in their uncertain gleams, a few terrified wretchesseeking safely in flight. The same lurid rays, casting a transitorylight on the iron gratings of the great tower, informed Wallace thatthe heat of conflict had drawn him to the prison of the earl.

  "We are now near the end of this night's work!" cried he. "Let uspress forward to give freedom to the Earl of Mar!"

  "Liberty and Lord Mar!" cried Kirkpatrick, rushing onward. He wasimmediately followed by his own men, but not quickly enough for hisdaring. The guard in the tower, hearing the outcry, issued from theflanking gates, and, surrounding him, took him prisoner.

  "If there be might in your arms," roared he, with the voice of a lion,"men of Loch Dione, rescue your leader!"

  They hurried forward, with yells of defiance; but the strength of thegarrison, awakened by the flying wretches from the defeat, turned outall its power, and, with De Valence at their head, poured onKirkpatrick's men, and would have overpowered them had not Wallace andhis sixty heroes, with desperate determination, cut a passage to themthrough the closing ranks.

  Pikes struck against corslets, swords rang on helmets, and theponderous battle-ax, falling with the weight of fate, cleft theuplifted target in twain. Blood spouted on every side, and thedripping hands of Kirkpatrick, as Wallace tore him from the enemy,proclaimed that he had bathed his vengeance in the stream. On beingreleased, he shook his ensanguined arms, and burst into a horrid laugh."The work speeds! Now through the heart of the governor!"

  Even while he spoke Wallace lost him again from his side; and again, bythe shouts of the Southrons, who cried, "No quarter for the rebel!" helearned he must be retaken. That merciless cry was the death-bell oftheir own doom. It directed Wallace to the spot, and throwing himselfand his brethren of Lanark into the midst of the band which held theprisoner, Kirkpatrick was again rescued. But thousands seemed nowsurrounding the chief himself. To do this generous deed, he hadadvanced further than he ought, and himself and his brave followersmust have been slain had he not recoiled, and covering their rear withthe great tower, all who had the hardihood to approach fell under theweight of the Scottish claymore.

  Scrymgeour, at the head of the Loch Dione men, in vain attempted toreach this contending party; and fearful of losing the royal standard,he was turning to make a valiant retreat, when Murray and Edwin (havingdisengaged their followers from the precipices of the beacon rock)rushed into the fray, striking their shields, and uttering theinspiring slogan of "Wallace and freedom!" It was re-echoed by everyScot; those that were flying returned; they who sustained the conflicthailed the cry with braces sinews; and the terrible thunder of theword, pealing from rank to rank, struck a terror into De Valence's men,which made them pause. The extinction of the beacon made them stillmore aghast.

  On that short moment turned the crisis of their fate. Wallace cut hisway forward through the dismayed Southrons, who, bearing the reiteratedshouts of the fresh reinforcements, knew not whether its strength mightnot be thousands instead of hundreds, and, panic-stricken, they becamean easy prey to their enemies. Surrounded, mixed with theirassailants, they knew not friends from foes, and each individual beingbent on flight, they indiscriminately cut to right and left, woundingas many of their own men as of the Scots, and finally, afterslaughtering half their companions, some few escaped through the smallposterns of the garrison, leaving the inner ballia entirely inpossession of the foe.

  The whole of the field being cleared
, Wallace ordered the tower to beforced. A strong guard was still within, and, as the assailants drewnear, every means was used to render their assaults abortive. As theScots pressed to the main entrance, stones and heavy metals were thrownupon their heads; but, not in the least intimidated, they stood beneaththe iron shower, till Wallace ordered them to drive a large felledtree, which lay on the ground, against the hinges of the door. Itburst open, and the whole party rushed into the hall.

  A short, sanguinary, but decisive conflict took place. The hauberk andplaid of Wallace were dyed from head to foot; his own brave blood, andthe ferocious stream from his enemies, mingled in one horrid hue uponhis garments.

  "Wallace! Wallace!" cried the stentorian lungs of Kirkpatrick. In amoment Wallace was at his side, and found him wrestling with two men.The light of a single lamp, suspended from the rafters, fell directupon the combatants. A dagger was pointed at the life of the oldknight, but Wallace laid the holder of it dead across the body of hisintended victim, and catching the other assailant by the throat, threwhim prostrate to the ground.

  "Spare me, for the honor of knighthood!" cried the conquered.

  "For my honor you shall die!" cried Kirkpatrick. His sword was alreadyat the heart of the Englishman. Wallace beat it back. "Kirkpatrick,he is my prisoner, and I give him life."

  "You know not what you do," cried the old knight, struggling withWallace to release his sword-arm. "This is De Valence!"

  "Quarter!" reiterated the panting and hard-pressed earl. "NobleWallace, my life! For I am wounded."

  "Sooner take my own!" cried the determined Kirkpatrick, fixing his footon the neck of the prostrate man, and trying to wrench his hand fromthe grasp of his commander.

  "Shame!" cried Wallace; "you must strike through me to kill any woundedman I hear cry for quarter! Release the earl, for your own honor."

  "Our safety lies in his destruction!" cried Kirkpatrick, and, enragedat opposition, he thrust his commander (little expecting such anaction) from off the body of the earl. De Valence seized hisadvantage, and catching Kirkpatrick by the limb that pressed on him,overthrew him; and by a sudden spring, turning quickly on Wallace,struck his dagger into his side. All this was done in an instant.Wallace did not fall, but staggering, with the weapon sticking in thewound, he was so surprised by the baseness of the deed, he could notgive the alarm till its perpetrator had disappeared.

  The flying earl took his course through a narrow passage between theworks, and proceeding swiftly toward the south, issued safely at one ofthe outer ballium gates--that part of the castle being now solitary, allthe men having been drawn from the walls to the contest within--andthence he made his escape in a fisher's boat across the Clyde.

  Meanwhile Wallace, having recovered himself, just as the Scots broughtin lighted torches from the lower apartments of the tower, saw SirRoger Kirkpatrick leaning sternly on his blood-dripping sword, and theyoung Edwin coming forward in garments too nearly the hue of his own.Andrew Murray stood already by his side. Wallace's hand was upon thehilt of the dagger which the ungrateful De Valence had left in hisbreast. "You are wounded! you are slain!" cried Murray in a voice ofconsternation. Edwin stood motionless with horror.

  "That dagger!" exclaimed Scrymgeour.

  "Has done nothing," replied Wallace, "but let a little more blood." Ashe spoke he drew it out, and thrusting the corner of his scarf into hisbosom, staunched the wound.

  "So is your mercy rewarded!" exclaimed Kirkpatrick.

  "So am I true to a soldier's duty," returned Wallace, "though DeValence is a traitor to his!"

  "You treated him as a man," replied Kirkpatrick, "but now you find hima treacherous fiend!"

  "Your eagerness, my brave friend," returned Wallace, "has lost him as aprisoner. If not for humanity or honor, for policy's sake, we ought tohave spared his life, and detained him as an hostage for our countrymenin England."

  Kirkpatrick remembered how his violence had released the earl, and helooked down abashed. Wallace, perceiving it, continued, "But let usnot abuse our time discoursing on a coward. He is gone, the fortressis ours, and our first measure must be to guard if from surprise."

  As he spoke, his eyes fell upon Edwin, who, having recovered from theshock of Murray's exclamation, had brought forward the surgeon of theirlittle band. A few minutes bound up the wounds of their chief, evenwhile beckoning the anxious boy towards him. "Brave youth," cried he,"you, at the imminent risk of your own life, explored these heights,that you might render our ascent more sure; you who have fought like ayoung lion in this unequal contest! here, in the face of all yourvaliant comrades, receive that knighthood which rather derives lusterfrom your virtues than gives additional consequence to your name."

  With a bounding heart Edwin bent his knee, and Wallace giving him thehallowed accolade,** the young knight rose from his position with allthe roses of his springing fame glowing in his countenance. Scrymgeourpresented him the knightly girdle, which he unbraced from his ownloins, and while the happy boy received the sword to which it wasattached, he exclaimed, with animation, "While I follow the examplebefore my eyes, I shall never draw this in an unjust cause, nor eversheath it in a just one."

  **Accolade, the three strokes of the sword given in knighting.

  "Go, then," returned Wallace, smiling his approval of this sentiment,"while work is to be done I will keep my knight to the toil; go, andwith twenty men of Lanark, guard the wall by which we ascended."

  Edwin disappeared, and Wallace, having dispatched detachments to occupyother parts of the garrison, took a torch in his hand and, turning toMurray, proposed seeking the Earl of Mar. Lord Andrew was soon at theiron door which led from the hall to the principal stairs.

  "We must have our friendly battering-ram here," cried he; "a closeprisoner do they indeed keep my uncle when even the inner doors arebolted on him."

  The men dragged the tree forward, and striking it against the iron, itburst open with the noise of thunder. Shrieks from within followed thesound. The women of Lady Mar, not knowing what to suppose during theuproar of the conflict, now hearing the door forced, expected nothingless than that some new enemies were advancing; and, giving themselvesup to despair, they flew into the room where the countess sat in equalthough less clamorous terror.

  At the shouts of the Scots, when they began the attack, the earl hadstarted from his couch. "That is not peace!" said he; "there is somesurprise!"

  "Alas, from whom?" returned Lady Mar; "who would venture to attack afortress like this, garrisoned with thousands?"

  The cry was repeated.

  "It is the slogan of Sir William Wallace!" cried he; "I shall be free!O, for a sword! Hear, hear!"

  As the shouts redoubled, and, mingled with the various clangors ofbattle, drew nearer the tower, the impatience of the earl could not berestrained. Hope and eagerness seemed to have dried up his wounds andnew-strung every nerve, while unarmed as he was, he rushed from theapartment, and hurried down the stairs which led to the iron door. Hefound it so firmly fastened by bars and padlocks, he could not move it.Again he ascended to his terrified wife, who, conscious how littleobligation Wallace owed to her, perhaps dreaded even more to see herhusband's hopes realized than to find herself yet more rigidly theprisoner of the haughty De Valence.

  "Joanna!" cried he, "the arm of God is with us. My prayers are heard.Scotland will yet be free. Hear those groans--those shouts. Victory!victory!"

  As he thus echoed the cry of triumph uttered by the Scots when burstingopen the outer gate of the tower, the foundations of the buildingshook, and Lady Mar, almost insensible with terror, received theexhausted body of her husband into her arms; he fainted from thetransport his weakened frame was unable to hear. Soon after this thestair-door was forced, and the panic-struck women ran shrieking intothe room to their mistress.

  The countess could not speak, but sat pale and motionless, supportinghis head on her bosom. Guided by the noise, Lord Andrew flew into theroom, and rushing toward his uncle,
fell at his feet. "Liberty!Liberty!" was all he could say. His words pierced the ear of the earllike a voice from heaven, and looking up, without a word, he threw hisarms round the neck of his nephew.

  Tears relieved the contending feelings of the countess; and the women,recognizing the young Lord of Bothwell, retired into a distant corner,well assured they had now no cause for fear.

  The earl rested but a moment on the panting breast of his nephew; when,gazing round, to seek the mighty leader of the band, he saw Wallaceenter, with the step of security and triumph in his eyes.

  "Ever my deliverer!" cried the venerable Mar, stretching forth hisarms. The next instant he held Wallace to his breast; and rememberingall that he had lost for his sake since they parted, a soldier's heartmelted, and he burst into tears. "Wallace, my preserver; thou victimfor Scotland, and for me--or rather, thou chosen of Heaven; who, by thesacrifice of all thou didst hold dear on earth, art made a blessing tothy country!-receive my thanks, and my heart."

  Wallace felt all in his soul which the earl meant to imply; butrecovered the calmed tone of his mind before he was released from theembrace of his friend; and when he raised him self, and replied to theacknowledgments of the countess, it was with a serene, though glowingcountenance.

  She, when she had glanced from the eager entrance and action of hernephew to the advancing hero, looked as Venus did when she beheld thegod of war rise from a field of blood. She started at the appearanceof Wallace; but it was not his garments dropping gore, nor theblood-stained falchion in his hand, that caused the new sensation; itwas the figure breathing youth and manhood; it was the face, whereevery noble passion of the heart had stamped themselves on his perfectfeatures; it was his air, where majesty and sweet entrancing gracemingled in manly union. They were all these that struck at once uponthe sight of Lady Mar and made her exclaim within herself, "This is awonder of man! This is the hero that is to humble Edward!-tobless--whom?" was her thought. "Oh, no woman! Let him be a creatureenshrined and holy, for no female heart to dare to love!"

  This passed through the mind of the countess in less time than it hasbeen repeated, and when she saw him clasped in her husband's arms, sheexclaimed to herself, "Helen, thou wert right; thy gratitude wasprophetic of a matchless object, while I, wretch that I was, evenwhispered the wish to my traitorous heart, while I gave informationagainst my husband, that this man, the cause of all, might be securedor slain!"

  Just as the last idea struck her, Wallace rose from the embrace of hisvenerable friend and met the riveted eye of the countess. Shestammered forth a few expressions of obligation; he attributed herconfusion to the surprise of the moment, and, replying to herrespectfully, turned again to the earl.

  The joy of the venerable chief was unbounded, when he found that ahandful of Scots had put two thousand Southrons to flight, and gainedentire possession of the castle. Wallace, having satisfied the anxiousquestions of his noble auditor, gladly perceived the morning light. Herose from his seat. "I shall take a temporary leave of you, my lord,"said he to the earl; "I must now visit my brave comrades at theirposts, and see the colors of Scotland planted on the citadel."