Whoever he may be, whether he came from France, or really from Scotland, as he says, his life is now forfeited. And that, by attempting to screen him, you may not seem to share his imputed guilt, I come to warn you of this discovery. A double guard is set around the keep; so no visible means are left for his escape."

"Then what will become of him?" exclaimed Bruce, forgetting all caution in dismay for his friend. "Am I to see the bravest of men, the savior of my country, butchered before my eyes by a tyrant? I may die, Gloucester, in his defense, but I will never surrender him to his enemy!"

Gloucester stood aghast at this disclosure. He came to accuse the friend of Bruce, that Bruce might be prepared to clear himself of connivance with so treasonable a crime; but now that he found this friend to be Wallace, the preserver of his own life, the restorer of his honor at Berwick, he immediately resolved to give him freedom.

"Bruce," cried he, "when I recollect the figure and deportment of this minstrel, I am surprised that, in despite of his disguise, I did not recognize the invincible Regent of Scotland; but now I know him, he shall find that generosity is not confined to his own breast. Give me your word that you will not stimulate suspicion by remonstrating with Edward against your own arrest till the court leaves Durham, and I will instantly find a way to conduct your friend in safety from the castle."

"I pledge you my word of honor," cried Bruce; "release but him, and, if you demand it of me, I would die in chains."

"He saved me at Berwick," replied Gloucester, "and I am anxious to repay the debt. If he be near, explain what has happened in as few words as possible, for we must not delay a moment. I left a council with the enraged king, settling what horrible death was to be his punishment."

"When he is safe," answered Bruce, "I will attest his innocence to you; meanwhile, rely on my faith, that you are giving liberty to a guiltless man."

Bruce hastened to Wallace, who had just completed his disguise. He briefly related what had pa.s.sed, and received for answer, that he would not leave his prince to the revenge of the tyrant. But Bruce, urging that the escape of the one could alone secure that of the other, implored him not to persist in refusing his offered safety, but to make direct for Normandy.

"I will join you at Rouen; and thence we can proceed to Guienne," added he. "The hour the court leaves Durham is that of my escape; and when free, what shall divide me from you and our enterprise!"

Wallace had hardly a.s.sented, when a tumultuous noise broke the silence of the courtyard; the great iron doors of the keep were thrown back on their hinges, and the clangor of arms, with many voices, resounded in the hall. Thinking all was lost, with a cry of despair, Bruce drew his sword, and threw himself before his friend. At that instant Gloucester entered the room. "They are quicker than I thought!" cried he; "but follow me. Bruce, remain where you are: sheathe your sword--be bold; deny you know anything of the minstrel, and all will be well." As he spoke, the feet of them who were come to seize Wallace already sounded in the adjoining apartment. Gloucester grasped the Scottish hero by the hand, turned into a short gallery, and, plucking the broad shaft of a cedar pilaster from under its capital, let himself and his companion into a pa.s.sage within the wall of the building. The ponderous beam closed after them into its former situation; and the silent pair descended, by a long flight of stone steps, to a square dungeon without any visible outlet; but the earl found one, by raising a flat stone marked by an elevated cross; and again they penetrated lower into the bosom of the earth by a gradually declining path till they stopped on a subterranean level ground. "This vaulted pa.s.sage," said Gloucester, "reaches, in a direct line, to Fincklay Abbey.** A particular circ.u.mstance constrained my uncle, the then abbot of that monastery, to discover it to me, ten years ago. He told me, that to none but the bishops of Durham and the abbots of Fincklay was the secret of its existence revealed. Since my coming hither this time (which was to escort the young queen--not to bear arms against Scotland), I one day took it into my head to revisit this recess; and, happily for the grat.i.tude I owe to you, I found all as I had left it in my uncle's lifetime. But, for the sake of my honor with Edward, whose wrath would fall upon me in most fearful shapes should he ever know that I delivered his vanquisher out of his hands, I must enjoin you to secrecy. Though the enemy of my king's ambition, you are the friend of mankind. You were my benefactor, n.o.ble Wallace; and I should deserve the rack, could I suffer one hair of your head to fall with violence to the ground."

**The remains of this curious subterranean pa.s.sage are yet to be seen; but parts of them are now broken in upon by water, and therefore the communication between Durham and Fincklay is now cut off.

With answering frankness, Wallace declared his sense of the earl's generosity; and earnestly commended the young Bruce to his watchful friendship. "The brave impetuosity of his mind," continued he, "at times may overthrow his prudence, and leave him exposed to dangers which a little virtuous caution might avoid. Dissimulation is a baseness I should shudder at seeing him practice; but when the flood of indignation swells his bosom, then tell him, that I conjure him, on the life of his dearest wishes, to be silent! The storm which threatens must blow over, and the power which guides through perils those who trust in it, will ordain that we shall meet again!"

Gloucester replied, "What you say I will repeat to Bruce. I am too sensible that my royal father-in-law has trampled on his rights; and should I ever see him restored to the throne of his ancestors, I could not but acknowledge the hand of Heaven in the event. Far would it have been from me to have bound him to remain a prisoner during Edward's sojourn at Durham, had I not been certain that your escape and his together would now give birth to a plausible argument in the minds of my enemies; and, grounding their suspicions on my acknowledged attachment to Bruce, the king might have been persuaded to believe me unfaithful to his interests. The result would be my disgrace, and a broken heart to her who has raised me by her generous love from the humbler ranks of n.o.bility to that of a prince, and her husband."

Gloucester then informed Wallace that about two hours before he came to alarm Bruce for his safety on this occasion, he was summoned by Edward to attend him immediately. When he obeyed, he found Soulis standing by the royal couch, and his majesty talking with vehemence. At sight of Gloucester he beckoned him to advance, and striking his hand fiercely on a letter he held, he exclaimed:

"Here, my son, behold the record of your father's shame!--of a King of England dishonored by a slave!"

As he spoke he dashed it from him. Soulis answered, smiling:

"Not a slave, my lord and king! can you not see, through the ill adapted disguise, the figure and mien of n.o.bility? He is some foreign lover of your bride, come--"

"Enough!" interrupted the king; "I know I am dishonored; but the villain shall die. Read the letter, Gloucester, and say what tortures shall stamp my vengeance!"

Gloucester opened the vellum, and read, in the queen's hand:

"Gentle minstrel! my lady countess tells me I must not see you again.

Were you old or ugly, as most bards are, I might, she says; but being young, it is not for a queen to smile upon one of your calling. She bade me remember, that when I smiled, you smiled too; and that you asked me questions unbecoming your degree. Pray do not do this any more; though I see no harm in it; alas! I used to smile as I liked when I was in France. Oh, if it were not for those I love best, who are now in England, I wish I were there again! and you would go with me, gentle minstrel, would you not? And you would teach me to sing so sweetly! I would then never talk with you, but would always speak in song; how pretty that would be! and then we should be from under the eyes of this harsh countess. My ladies in France would let you come in and stay as long with me as I pleased. But as I cannot go back again, I will make myself happy here in spite of the countess, who rules me more as if she were my stepmother than I hers; but then to be sure she is a few years older.

"I will see you this evening, and your sweet harp shall sing all my heart-aches to sleep. My French lady of honor will conduct you secretly to my apartments. I am sure you are too honest even to guess at what the countess thinks you might fancy when I smile on you. But, gentle minstrel, presume not, and you shall ever find an indulgent mistress in M--

"P.S. At the last vespers to-night, my page shall come for you."

Gloucester knew the queen's handwriting; and not being able to contradict that this letter was hers, he inquired how it came into his majesty's hands.

"I found it," replied Soulis, "in crossing the courtyard; it lay on the ground, where, doubtless, it had been accidentally dropped by the queen's messenger."

Gloucester, wishing to extenuate for the queen's sake, whose youth and inexperience he pitied, affirmed that, from the simplicity with which the note was written, from her innocent references to the minstrel's profession, he could not suppose that she addressed him in any other character.

"If he be only a base itinerant harper," replied the king, "the deeper is my disgrace; for, if a pa.s.sion of another king than music be not portrayed in every word of this artful letter, I never read a woman's heart!"

The king continued to comment on the fatal scroll with the lynx-eye of jealousy, loading her name with every opprobrium. Gloucester inwardly thanked Heaven that none other than Soulis and himself were present to hear Edward fasten such foul dishonor on his queen. The generous earl could not find other arguments to a.s.suage the mountain ire of her husband. She might be innocent of actual guilt, or indeed of being aware of more than a queen's usual interest in a poor wandering minstrel was, as the king said, in every line. Gloucester remaining silent, Edward believed him convinced of the queen's crime; and being too wrathful to think of caution, he sent for the bishop and others of his lords, and when they entered, vented to them also his injury and indignation. Many were not inclined to be of the same opinion with their sovereign; some thought with Gloucester, others deemed the letter altogether a forgery; and a few adopted the severer inferences of her husband; but all united (even those determined to spare the queen) in recommending an immediate apprehension and private execution of the minstrel.

"It is not fit," cried Soulis, "that a man who has ever been suspected of invading our monarch's honor, should live another hour."

This sanguinary sentence was acceded to, and with as little remorse by the whole a.s.sembly as if they had merely condemned a tree to the ax.

Such is the carelessness with which the generality of arbitrary a.s.semblies decide on the fate of a fellow mortal! Earl Percy, who gave his vote for the death of the minstrel more from this culpable inconsideration than that thirst of blood which stimulated the voices of Soulis and the c.u.mmins, proposed--as he believed the queen innocent--that honor should be examined relative to the circ.u.mstances mentioned in the letter.

The king immediately ordered their attendance.

The royal Jane of Acre appeared at the first summons, and spoke with an air of truth and freedom from alarm which convinced every candid ear of the innocence of the queen. Her testimony was, that she believed the minstrel to be other than he seemed; but she was certain, from the conversations which the queen had held with her after the bishop's feast, that it was at this very feast she had first seen him, and that she was ignorant of his real rank. On being questioned by the bishop, the countess acknowledged that her majesty had praised his figure as well as his singing; "yet not more," added she, "than she afterward did to the king when she awakened his curiosity to send for him." Her highness continued to reply to the interrogatories put to her, by saying, that it was in the king's presence she herself first saw the minstrel; and then she thought his demeanor much above his situation; but, when he accompanied the queen and herself into her majesty's apartments, she had then an opportunity to observe him narrowly, as the queen engaged him in conversation; and by his answers, questions, and easy, yet respectful deportment, she became convinced he was not what he appeared.

"And why, Jane," asked the king, "did you not impart these suspicions to your husband or to me?"

"Because," replied she, "remembering that my interference on a certain public occasion brought my late husband, Clare, under your majesty's displeasure; on my marriage with Monthermer, I made a solemn vow before my confessor never to offend in the like manner. And besides, the countenance of this stranger was so ingenious, and his sentiments so natural and honorable, I could not suspect he came on any disloyal errand."

"Lady," observed one of the elder lords, "if you thought so well of the queen and of this man, why did you caution her against his smiles, and deem it necessary to persuade her not to see him again?"

The countess blushed at this question, but replied, "Because I saw the minstrel was a gentleman. He possessed a n.o.ble figure, and a handsome face in spite of his Egyptian skin. Like most young gentlemen, he might be conscious of these advantages, and attribute the artless approbation, the innocent smiles of my gracious queen, to a source more flattering to his vanity. I have known many lords, not far from your majesty, make similar mistakes on as little grounds," added she, looking disdainfully toward some of the younger n.o.bles; "and, therefore, to prevent such insolence, I desired his final dismission."

"Thank you, my dear Jane," replied the king; "you almost persuade me of Margaret's innocence."

"Believe it, sire!" cried she with animation; "whatever romantic thoughtlessness her youth and inexperience may have led her into, I pledge my life on her purity."

"First, let us hear what that French woman has to say to the a.s.signation," exclaimed Soulis, whose polluted heart could not suppose the existence of true purity, and whose cruel disposition exulted in torturing and death; "question her, and then her majesty may have full acquittal."

Again the brow of Edward was overcast. The fiends of jealously once more tugged at his heart; and ordering the Countess of Gloucester to withdraw he commanded the Baroness de Pontoise to be brought into his presence.

When she saw the king's threatening looks, and beheld the fearful expression which shot from every surrounding countenance, she shrunk with terror. Long backneyed in secret gallantries, the same inward whisper which had proclaimed to Soulis that the queen was guilty, induced her to believe that she had been the confidante of an illicit pa.s.sion; and therefore, though she knew nothing really bad of her unhappy mistress, yet, fancying that she did, she stood before the royal tribunal with the air and aspect of a culprit.

"Repeat to me," demanded the king, "or answer it with your head, all that you know of Queen Margaret's intimacy with the man who calls himself a minstrel."

At these words, which were delivered in a tone that seemed the sentence of death, the French woman fell on her knees, and in a burst of terror exclaimed, "Sire, I will reveal all if your majesty will grant me pardon for having too faithfully served my mistress!"

"Speak! speak!" cried the king, with desperate impatience. "I swear to pardon you, even if you have joined in a conspiracy against my life; but speak the truth, and all the truth, that judgment, without mercy, may fall on the guilty heads!"

"Then I obey," answered the baroness.

"Foul betrayer!" half-exclaimed Gloucester, turning disappointed away.

"O! what it is to be vile, and to trust the vile! But virtue will not be auxiliary to vice--and so wickedness falls by its own agents."

The baroness, raised from her kneeling position by Soulis, began:

"The only time I ever heard of, or saw this man, to my knowledge, was when he was brought to play before my lady at the bishop's banquet. I did not much observe him, being engaged in conversation at the other end of the room; so I cannot say, whether I might not have seen him in France; for many n.o.ble lords adored the Princess Margaret, though she appeared to frown upon them all. But I must confess, when I attended her majesty's disrobing after the feast, she put to me so many questions about what I thought of the minstrel who had sung so divinely, that I began to think her admiration too great to have been awakened by a mere song. And then she asked me, if a king could have a n.o.bler air than he had; and she laughed, and said she would send your majesty to school to learn of him."

"d.a.m.nable traitress!" exclaimed the king.

The baroness paused, and retreated before the sudden fury which flashed from his eyes.