The Barns of Ayr.
While the little bark bounded over the waves toward the main land, the
poor pilgrims of earth who were its freightage, with heavy hearts bent
toward each other, intent on the further information they were to
receive.
"Here is a list of the murdered chiefs, and of those who are in the
dungeons, expecting the like treatment," continued Graham, holding out
a parchment; "it was given to me by my faithful servant." Wallace took
it, but seeing his grandfather's name at the top, he could look no
further; closing the scroll, "Gallant Graham," said he, "I want no
stimulus to urge me to the extirpation I meditate. If the sword of
Heaven be with us, not one perpetrator of this horrid massacre shall be
alive to-morrow to repeat the deed."
"What massacre?" Edwin ventured to inquire. Wallace put the parchment
into his hand. "A list of the Scottish chiefs murdered on the 18th of
June, 1297, in the Judgment Hall of the English Barons at Ayr," his
cheek, paled by the suspense of his mind, now reddened with the hue of
indignation; but when the venerated name of his general's grandfather
met his sight, his horror struck eye sought the face of Wallace; it was
dark as before, and he was now in earnest discourse with Graham.
Forbearing to interrupt him, Edwin continued to read over the
blood-registered names. In turning the page, his eye glanced to the
opposite side; and he saw at the head of "A list of prisoners in the
dungeons of Ayr," the name of "Lord Dundaff" and immediately after it,
that of "Lord Ruthven!" He uttered a piercing cry; and extending his
arms to Wallace, who turned round at so unusual a sound, the
terror-struck boy exclaimed, "My father is in their hands! Oh! If you
are indeed my brother, fly to Ayr, and save him!"
Wallace took up the open list which Edwin had dropped; he saw the name
of Lord Ruthven amongst the prisoners; and folding his arms round this
affectionate son, "Compose yourself," said he, "it is to Ayr I am
going; and if the God of Justice be our speed, your father and Lord
Dundaff shall not see another day in prison."
Edwin threw himself on the neck of his friend; "My benefactor!" was all
he could utter. Wallace pressed him silently to his bosom.
"Who is this youth?" inquired Graham; "to which of the noble companions
of my captive father is he son?"
"To William Ruthven," answered Wallace; "the valiant lord of the Carse
of Gowry. And it is a noble scion from that glorious root. He it was
that enabled me to win Dumbarton. Look up, my brother!" cried Wallace,
trying to regain so tender a mind from the paralyzing terrors which had
seized it; "Look up, and hear me recount the first fruits of your
maiden arms, to our gallant friend."
Covered with blushes, arising from anxious emotion, as well as from a
happy consciousness of having wont he praises of his general, Edwin
rose from his breast, and bowing to Sir John, still leaned his head
upon the shoulder of Wallace. That amiable being, who, when seeking to
wipe the tear of affliction from the cheek of others, minded not the
drops of blood which were distilling in secret from his own heart,
began the recital of his first acquaintance with his young Sir Edwin.
He enumerated every particular; his bringing the detachment from
Bothwell, through the enemy-encircled mountains, to Glenfinlass; his
scaling the walls of Dumbarton to make the way smooth for the Scots to
ascend; and his after prowess in that well-defended fortress. As
Wallace proceeded, the wonder of Graham was raised to a pitch, only to
be equaled by his admiration; and taking the hand of Edwin, "Receive
me, brave youth," said he, "as your second brother; Sir William Wallace
is your first; but, this night, we shall fight side by side for our
fathers; and let that be our bond of kindred."
Edwin pressed the young chief's cheek with his innocent lips; "Let us,
together, free them;" cried he' "and then we shall be born twins in
happiness."
"So be it," cried Graham; "and Sir William Wallace be the sponser of
that hour!"
Wallace smiled on them; and turning his head toward the shore, when the
vessel doubled a certain point, he saw the beach covered with armed
men. To be sure they were his own, he drew his sword, and waved it in
the air. At that moment a hundred falchions flashed in the sunbeams,
and the shouts of "Wallace!" came loudly on the breeze.
Graham and Edwin started on their feet; the seamen piled their oars;
the boat dashed into the breakers--and Wallace, leaping on shore, was
received with acclamations by his eager soldiers.
He no sooner landed, than he commenced his march. Murray joined him on
the banks of the Irwin; and as Ayr was no very great distance from that
river, at two hours before midnight the little army entered Laglane
Wood; where they halted, while Wallace, with his chieftains proceeded
to reconnoiter the town. The wind swept in gusts through the trees,
and seemed by its dismal yellings, to utter warnings of the dreadful
retributions he was about to inflict. He had already declared his plan
of destruction; and Graham, as a first measure, went to the spot he had
fixed on with Macdougal, his servant, as a place of rendezvous. He
returned with the man; who informed Wallace, that in honor of the
sequestrated lands of the murdered chiefs having been that day
partitioned by De Valance amongst certain Southron lords, a grand feast
was going on in the governor's palace. Under the very roof where they
had shed the blood of the trusting Scots, they were now keeping this
carousal!
"Now, then, is our time to strike!" cried Wallace; and ordering
detachments of his men to take possession of the avenues to the town,
he set forth with others, to reach the front of the castle gates, by a
less frequented path than the main street. The darkness being so great
that no object could be distinctly seen, they had not gone far, before
Macdougal, who had undertaken to be their guide, discovered by the
projection of a hill on the right, that he had lost the road.
"Our swords will find one!" exclaimed Kirkpatrick.
Unwilling to miss any advantage, in a situation where so much was at
stake, Wallace gladly hailed a twinkling light, which gleamed from what
he supposed the window of a distant cottage. Kirkpatrick, with
Macdougal, offered to go forward, and explore what it might be. In a
few minutes they arrived at a thatched building; from which, to their
surprise, issued the wailing strains of the coronach. Kirkpatrick
paused. Its melancholy notes were sung by female voices. Hence, there
being no danger in applying to such harmless inhabitants, to learn the
way to the citadel, he proceeded to the door; when, intending to knock,
the weight of his mailed arm burst open its slender latch, and
discovered two poor women, in an inner apartment, wringing their hands
over a shrouded corpse. While the chief entered his friends came up.
Murray and Graham, struck with sounds never breathed over the vulgar
dead, lingered at the porch wondering what noble Scot could be the
subject of lamentation in so lowly an abode. The stopping of these two
chieftains impeded the steps of Wallace, who was pressing forward,
without eye or ear for anything but the object of his search.
Kirkpatrick at that moment appeared on the threshold, and without a
word, putting forth his hand, seized the arm of his commander, and
pulled him into the cottage. Before Wallace could ask the reason of
this, he saw a woman run forward with a light in her hand; the beams of
which falling on the face of the knight of Ellerslie, with a shriek of
joy she rushed toward him, and threw herself upon his neck.
He instantly recognized Elspa, his nurse; the faithful attendant on his
grandfather's declining years! the happy matron who had decked the
bridal bed of his Marion! and with an anguish of recollections that
almost unmanned him, he returned her affectionate embrace.
"Here he lies!" cried the old woman, drawing him toward the rushy bier;
and before he had time to demand, "Who?" she pulled down the shroud and
disclosed the body of Sir Ronald Crawford. Wallace gazed on it, with a
look of such dreadful import that Edwin, whose anxious eyes then sought
his countenance, trembled with a nameless horror. "Oh," thought he,
"to what is this noble soul reserved! Is he alone doomed to extirpate
the enemies of Scotland, that every ill falls direct upon his head!"
"Sorry, sorry bier, for the good Lord Ronald!" cried the old woman; "a
poor wake to mourn the loss of him who was the benefactor of all the
country round! But had I not brought him here, the salt sea must have
been his grave." Here sobs prevented her utterance; but after a short
pause, with many vehement lamentations over the virtues of the dead,
and imprecations on his murderers, she related that as soon as the
woful tidings were brought to Monktown kirk (and brought too by the
Southron, who was to take it in possession!) she and the clan's-folk
who would not swear fidelity to the new lord, were driven from the
house. She hastened to the bloody theater of massacre; and there
beheld the bodies of the murdered chiefs drawn on sledges to the
seashore. Elspa knew that of her master, by the scar on his breast,
which he had received in the battle of Largs. When she saw corpse
after corpse thrown, with a careless hand, into the waves, and the man
approached who was to cast the honored chief of Monktown, to the same
unhallowed burial, she threw herself frantically on the body, and so
moved the man's compassion, that, taking advantage of the time when his
comrades were out of sight, he permitted her to wrap the dead Sir
Ronald in her plaid, and so carry him away between her sister and
herself. But ere she had raised her sacred burden, the man directed
her to seek the venerable head from amongst the others, which lay
mingled in a sack; drawing it forth, she placed it beside the body, and
then hastily retired with both, to the hovel where Wallace had found
her. It was a shepherd's hut, from which the desolation of the times
having long ago driven away its former inhabitant, she had hoped that
in so lonely an obscurity, she might have performed without notice, a
chieftain's rites, to the remains of the murdered lord of the very
lands on which she wept him. These over, she meant he should be
interred in secret by the fathers of a neighboring church, which he had
once richly endowed. With these intentions, she and her sister were
chanting over him the sad dirge of their country, when Sir Roger
Kirkpatrick burst open the door. "Ah!" cried she, as she closed the
dismal narrative; "though two lonely women were all they had left of
the lately thronged household of Sir Ronald Crawford, to raise the last
lament over his revered body, yet in that and midnight hour, our
earthly voices were not alone; the wakeful spirits of his daughters,
hovered in the air, and joined the deep coronach!"
Wallace sighed heavily as he looked on the animated face of the aged
mourner. Attachment to the venerable dead seemed to have inspired her
with thoughts beyond her station; but the heart is an able teacher, and
he saw that true affection speaks but one language.
As her ardent eyes withdrew from their heavenward gaze, they fell upon
the shrouded face of her master. A napkin concealed the wound of
decapitation. "Chiefs," cried she, in a burst of recollection, "ye
have not seen all the cruelty of these murderers!" At these words she
suddenly withdrew the linen, and lifting up the pale head, held it
wofully toward Wallace. "Here," cried she, "once more kiss these lips!
They have often kissed yours, when you were a babe; and as insensible
to his love, as he is now to your sorrow."
Wallace received the head in his arms; the long silver beard, thick
with gouts of blood, hung over his hands. He gazed on it, intently,
for some minutes. An awful silence pervaded the room; every eye was
riveted upon him.
Looking round on his friends, with a countenance whose deadly hue gave
a sepulchral fire to the gloomy denunciation of his eyes; "Was it
necessary," said he, "to turn my heart to iron, that I was brought to
see this sight?" All the tremendous purpose of his soul was read in
his face, while he laid the head back upon the bier. His lips again
moved, but none heard what he said. He rushed from the hut, and with
rapid strides, proceeded in profound silence toward the palace.
He well knew that no honest Scot could be under that roof. The
building, though magnificent, was altogether a structure of wood; to
fire it, then, was his determination. TO destroy all, at once, in the
theater of their cruelty; to make an execution, not engage in a warfare
of man to man, was his resolution; for they were not soldiers hew as
seeking, but assassins; and to pitch his brave Scots in the open field
against such unmanly wretches would be to dishonor his men, to give
criminals a chance for the lives they had forfeited.
All being quiet in the streets through which he passed, and having set
strong bodies of men at the mouth of every sallyport of the citadel, he
made a bold attack upon the guard at the barbican-gate; and, ere they
could give the alarm, all being slain, he and his chosen troop entered
the portal, and made direct to the palace. The lights which blazed
through the windows of the banqueting hall showed him to the spot; and,
having detached Graham and Edwin to storm the keep, where their fathers
were confined, he took the half-intoxicated sentinels at the
palace-gates by surprise, and striking them into a sleep from which
they would wake no more, he fastened the doors upon the assassins. His
men surrounded the building with hurdles filled with combustibles,
which they had prepared according to his directions; and, when all was
ready, Wallace, with the mighty spirit of retribution nerving every
limb, mounted to the roof, and tearing off the shingles, with a flaming
brand in his hand, showed himself to the affrighted revelers beneath;
and, as he threw it blazing among them, he cried aloud, "The blood of
the murdered calls for vengeance, and it comes."
At that instant the matches were put to the fagots which surrounded the
building; and the party within, springing from their seats, hastened
toward the doors. All were fastened on them; and retreating into the
midst of the room, they fearfully looked toward the tremendous figure
above, which, like a supernatural being, seemed indeed come to rain
fire upon their guilty heads. Some shook with superstitious dread;
others, driven to atheistical despair, with horrible execrations, again
strove to force a passage through the doors. A second glance told De
Valence whose was the hand which had launched the thunderbolt at his
feet; and, turning to Sir Richard Arnuf, he cried, in a voice of
horror, "My arch-enemy is there!"
Thick smoke rising from within and without the building now obscured
his terrific form. The shouts of the Scots as the fire covered its
walls, and the streaming flames licking the windows, and pouring into
every opening of the building, raised such a terror in the breasts of
the wretches within, that, with the most horrible cries, they again and
again flew to the doors to escape. Not an avenue appeared; almost
suffocated with smoke, and scorched by the blazing rafters which fell
from the burning roof, they at last made a desperate attempt to break a
passage through the great portal. Arnuf was at their head, and sunk to
abjectness by his despair, in a voice which terror rendered piercing,
he called aloud for mercy. The words reached the ear of Sir Roger
Kirkpatrick, who stood neared to the door. In a voice of thunder he
replied, "That ye gave, ye shall receive. Where was mercy when our
fathers and our brothers fell beneath your murderous axes!"
Aymer de Valence came up at this moment with a wooden pillar, which he
and his strongest men in the company had torn from under the gallery
that surrounded the room, and with all their strength dashing it
against the great door, they at last drove it from its bolts. But now
a wall of men opposed them. Desperate at the sight, and with a burning
furnace in their rear, it was not the might of man that could prevent
their escape, and with the determination of despair, rushing forward,
the foremost rank of Scots fell. But ere the exulting Southrons could
press out into the open space, Wallace himself had closed upon them,
and Arnuf, the merciless Arnuf, whose voice had pronounced the sentence
of death upon Sir Ronald Crawford, died beneath his hand.
Wallace was not aware that he had killed the Governor of Ayr till the
terror-struck exclamations of his enemies informed him that the
ruthless instigator of the massacre was slain. This event was welcome
news to the Scots; and hoping that the next death would be that of De
Valence, they pressed on with redoubled energy.
Aroused by so extraordinary a noise, and alarmed by the flames of the
palace, the soldiers quartered near hastened half armed to the spot.
But their presence rather added to the confusion than gave assistance
to the besieged. They were without leaders, and not daring to put
themselves to action, for fear of being afterward punished (in the case
of a mischance) for having presumed to move without their officers,
they stood dismayed and irresolute, while those very officers, who had
been all at the banquet, were falling in heaps under the swords of the
exterminating Scots.
Meanwhile, the men who guarded the prisoners in the keep, having their
commanders with them, made a stout resistance there; and one of the
officers, seeing a possible advantage, stole out, and, gathering a
company of the scattered garrison, suddenly taking Graham in flank,
made no inconsiderable havoc amongst that part of his division. Edwin
blew the signal for assistance. Wallace heard the blast; and seeing
the day was won at the palace, he left the finishing of the affair to
Kirkpatrick and Murray; and, drawing off a small party to reinforce
Graham, he took the Southron officer by surprise. The enemy's ranks
fell around him like corn beneath the sickle; and, grasping a huge
battering ram which his men had found, he burst open the door of the
keep. Graham and Edwin rushed in; and Wallace, sounding his own bugle
with the notes of victory, his reserves (whom he had placed at the ends
of the streets) entered in every direction, and received the flying
soldiers of De Valence upon their pikes.
Dreadful was now the carnage; for the Southrons, forgetting all
discipline, fought every man for his life; which the furious Scots
driving them into the far-spreading flames, what escaped the sword
would have perished in the fire, had not the relenting heart of Wallace
pleaded for bleeding humanity, and he ordered the trumpet to sound a
parley. He was obeyed; and, standing on an adjacent mound, in an awful
voice he proclaimed that "whoever had not been accomplices in the
horrible massacre of the Scottish chiefs, if they would ground their
arms, and take an oath never to serve again against Scotland, their
lives should be spared."
Hundreds of swords fell to the ground; and their late holders, kneeling
at his feet, took the oath perscribed. At the head of those who
surrendered appeared the captain who had commanded at the prison. He
was the only officer of all the late garrison who survived, all else
had fallen in the conflict or perished in the flames; and when he saw
that not one of his late numerous companions existed to go through the
same humiliating ceremony, with an aghast countenance he said to
Wallace, as he presented his sword, "Then I must believe that, with
this weapon, I am surrendering to Sir William Wallace the possession of
this castle and the government of Ayr. I see not one of my late
commanders--all must be slain; and for me to hold out longer would be to
sacrifice my men, not to redeem that which has been so completely
wrested from us. But I serve severe exactors, and I hope that your
testimony, my conqueror, will assure my king that I fought as became
his standard."
Wallace gave him a gracious answer; and committing him to the generous
care of Murray, he turned to give orders to Ker respecting the
surrendered and the slain. During these momentous events, Graham had
deemed it prudent that, exhausted by anxiety and privations, the noble
captives should not come forth to join in the battle; and not until the
sound of victory echoed through the arches of their dungeons, would he
suffer the eager Dundaff to see and thank his deliverer. Meanwhile,
the young Edwin appeared before the eyes of his father, like the angel
who opened the prison gates to Peter. After embracing him with all a
son's fondness, in which for the moment he lost the repressing idea,
that he might have offended by his truancy; after recounting, in a few
hasty sentences, the events which had brought him to be a companion of
Sir William Wallace; and to avenge the injuries of Scotland in Ayr, he
knocked off the chains of his amazed father. Eager to perform the like
service to all who had suffered in like manner, and accompanied by the
happy Lord Ruthven (who gazed with delight on his son, treading so
early the path of glory), he hastened around to the other dungeons; and
gladly proclaimed to the astonished inmates, freedom and safety.
Having rid them of their shackles, he had just entered with his noble
company into the vaulted chamber, which contained the released Lord
Dundaff, when the peaceful clarion sounded. At the joyful tidings,
Graham started on his feet: "Now, my father, you shall see the bravest
of men!"