A Prisoner
After some consultation between the leaders, it was agreed to make
an attempt to capture the castle of Knockbawn. It was known to
possess a garrison of some sixty men only, and although strong,
Archie and Sir James believed that it could be captured by assault.
It was arranged that Archie should ride to reconnoitre it, and
taking two mounted retainers he started, the force remaining in the
forest some eight miles distant. The castle of Knockbawn stood on
a rocky promontory, jutting a hundred and fifty yards into the sea.
When he neared the neck of the point, which was but some twenty
yards wide, Archie bade his followers fall back a short distance.
"I will ride," he said, "close up to the castle walls. My armour
is good, and I care not for arrow or crossbow bolt. It were best
you fell back a little, for they may have horses and may sally out
in pursuit. I am well mounted and fear not being overtaken, but it
were best that you should have a good start."
Archie then rode forward toward the castle. Seeing a knight
approaching alone the garrison judged that he was friendly, and it
was not until it was seen that instead of approaching the drawbridge
he turned aside and rode to the edge of the fosse, that they
suspected that he was a foe. Running to the walls they opened fire
with arrows upon him, but by this time Archie had seen all that
he required. Across the promontory ran a sort of fissure, some ten
yards wide and as many deep. From the opposite edge of this the
wall rose abruptly. Here assault would be difficult, and it was
upon the gateway that an attack must be made. Several arrows had
struck his armour and glanced off, and Archie now turned and quietly
rode away, his horse being protected by mail like himself. Scarce
had he turned when he saw a sight which caused him for a moment
to draw rein. Coming at full gallop toward the promontory was a
strong body of English horse, flying the banner of Sir Ingram de
Umfraville. They were already nearer to the end of the neck than
he was. There was no mode of escape, and drawing his sword he
galloped at full speed to meet them. As he neared them Sir Ingram
himself, one of the doughtiest of Edward's knights, rode out with
levelled lance to meet him. At full gallop the knights charged
each other. Sir Ingram's spear was pointed at the bars of Archie's
helmet, but as the horses met each other Archie with a blow of his
sword cut off the head of the lance and dealt a tremendous backhanded
blow upon Sir Ingram's helmet as the latter passed him, striking
the knight forward on to his horse's neck; then without pausing a
moment he dashed into the midst of the English ranks.
The horsemen closed around him, and although he cut down several
with his sweeping blows he was unable to break his way through them.
Such a conflict could not last long. Archie received a blow from
behind which struck him from his horse. Regaining his feet he
continued the fight, but the blows rained thick upon him, and he
was soon struck senseless to the ground.
When he recovered he was in a room in the keep of the castle. Two
knights were sitting at a table near the couch on which he was lying.
"Ah!" exclaimed one, on seeing Archie open his eyes and move, "I
am glad to see your senses coming back to you, sir prisoner. Truly,
sir, I regret that so brave a knight should have fallen into my
hands, seeing that in this war we must needs send our prisoners
to King Edward, whose treatment of them is not, I must e'en own,
gentle; for indeed you fought like any paladin. I deemed not that
there was a knight in Scotland, save the Bruce himself, who could
have so borne himself; and never did I, Ingram de Umfraville, come
nearer to losing my seat than I did from that backhanded blow you
dealt me. My head rings with it still. My helmet will never be
fit to wear again, and as the leech said when plastering my head,
'had not my skull been of the thickest, you had assuredly cut
through it.' May I crave the name of so brave an antagonist?"
"I am Sir Archibald Forbes," Archie replied.
"By St. Jago!" the knight said, "but I am sorry for it, seeing that,
save Bruce himself, there is none in the Scottish ranks against
whom King Edward is so bitter. In the days of Wallace there was no
one whose name was more often on our lips than that of Sir Archibald
Forbes, and now, under Bruce, it is ever coming to the front. I had
thought to have asked Edward as a boon that I should have kept you
as my prisoner until exchanged for one on our side, but being Sir
Archibald Forbes I know that it were useless indeed; nevertheless,
sir knight, I will send to King Edward, begging him to look mercifully
upon your case, seeing how bravely and honourably you have fought."
"Thanks for your good offices, Sir Ingram," Archie replied, "but
I shall ask for no mercy for myself. I have never owed or paid him
allegiance, but, as a true Scot, have fought for my country against
a foreign enemy."
"But King Edward does not hold himself to be a foreign enemy," the
knight said, "seeing that Baliol, your king, with Comyn and all
your great nobles, did homage to him as Lord Paramount of Scotland."
"It were an easy way," Archie rejoined, "to gain a possession to
nominate a puppet from among the nobles already your vassals, and
then to get him to do homage. No, sir knight, neither Comyn nor
Baliol, nor any other of the Anglo-Norman nobles who hold estate
in Scotland, have a right to speak for her, or to barter away her
freedom. That is what Wallace and thousands of Scotchmen have fought
and died to protest against, and what Scotchmen will do until their
country is free."
"It is not a question for me to argue upon," Sir Ingram said
surlily. "King Edward bids me fight in Scotland, and as his knight
and vassal I put on my harness without question. But I own to
you that seeing I have fought beside him in Gascony, when he, as
a feudal vassal of the King of France, made war upon his lord, I
cannot see that the offence is an unpardonable one when you Scotchmen
do the same here. Concerning the lawfulness of his claim to be
your lord paramount, I own that I neither know nor care one jot.
However, sir, I regret much that you have fallen into my hands,
for to Carlisle, where the king has long been lying, as you have
doubtless heard, grievously ill, I must forthwith send you. I must
leave you here with the governor, for in half an hour I mount and
ride away with my troop. He will do his best to make your sojourn
here easy until such time as I may have an opportunity of sending
you by ship to Carlisle; and now farewell, sir," he said, giving
Archie his hand, "I regret that an unkind chance has thrown so
gallant a knight into my hands, and that my duty to the king forbids
me from letting you go free."
"Thanks, Sir Ingram," Archie replied. "I have ever heard of you
as a brave knight, and if this misfortune must fall upon me, would
sooner that I should have been captured by you than by one of less
fame and honour."
The governor now had a meal with some wine set before Archie, and
then left him alone.
"I am not at Carlisle yet," Archie said to himself. "Unless
I mistake, we shall have Sir James thundering at the gate before
morning. Cluny will assuredly have ridden off at full speed to carry
the news when he saw that I was cut off, and e'en now he will be
marching towards the castle." As he expected, Archie was roused
before morning by a tremendous outburst of noise. Heavy blows were
given, followed by a crash, which Archie judged to be the fall of
the drawbridge across the fosse. He guessed that some of Douglas's
men had crept forward noiselessly, had descended the fosse, and
managed to climb up to the gate, and had then suddenly attacked
with their axes the chains of the drawbridge.
A prodigious uproar raged in the castle. Orders were shouted, and
the garrison, aroused from their sleep, snatched up their arms
and hastened to the walls. Outside rose the war cry, "A Douglas! A
Douglas!" mingled with others of, "Glen Cairn to the rescue!" For
a few minutes all was confusion, then a light suddenly burst up
and grew every instant more and more bright.
"Douglas has piled faggots against the gates," Archie said to
himself. "Another quarter of an hour and the castle will be his."
Three or four minutes later the governor with six soldiers, two
of whom bore torches, entered the room. "You must come along at
once, sir knight," the governor said. "The attack is of the fiercest,
and I know not whether we shall make head against it, but at any
rate I must not risk your being recaptured, and must therefore
place you in a boat and send you off without delay to the castle
at Port Patrick."
It was in vain for Archie to think of resistance, he was unarmed
and helpless. Two of the soldiers laid hands on him and hurried
him along until they reached the lower chambers of the castle. The
governor unlocked a door, and with one of the torch bearers led
the way down some narrow steps. These were some fifty in number,
and then a level passage ran along for some distance. Another door
was opened, and the fresh breeze blew upon them as they issued
forth. They stood on some rocks at the foot of the promontory on
which the castle stood. A large boat lay close at hand, drawn to
the shore. Archie and the six soldiers entered her; four of the
latter took the oars, and the others seated themselves by their
prisoner, and then the boat rowed away, while the governor returned
to aid in the defence of the castle.
The boat was but a quarter of a mile away when on the night air
came the sound of a wild outburst of triumphant shouts which told
that the Scots had won their way into the castle. With muttered
curses the men bent to their oars and every minute took them further
away from Knockbawn.
Archie was bitterly disappointed. He had reckoned confidently on
the efforts of Douglas to deliver him, and the possibility of his
being sent off by sea had not entered his mind. It seemed to him
now that his fate was sealed. He had noticed on embarking that
there were no other boats lying at the foot of the promontory, and
pursuit would therefore be impossible.
After rowing eight hours the party reached Port Patrick, where Archie
was delivered by the soldiers to the governor with a message from
their commander saying that the prisoner, Sir Archibald Forbes,
was a captive of great importance, and was, by the orders of Sir
Ingram de Umfraville who had captured him, to be sent on to Carlisle
to the king when a ship should be going thither. A fortnight passed
before a vessel sailed. Archie was placed in irons and so securely
guarded in his dungeon that escape was altogether impossible. So
harsh was his confinement that he longed for the time when a vessel
would sail for Carlisle, even though he was sure that the same fate
which had attended so many of Scotland's best and bravest knights
awaited him there.
The winds were contrary, and the vessel was ten days upon the
voyage. Upon reaching Carlisle Archie was handed to the governor
of the castle, and the next morning was conducted to the presence
of the king himself. The aged monarch, in the last extremity of
sickness, lay upon a couch. Several of his nobles stood around him.
"So," he said as the prisoner was brought before him, "this is
Archibald Forbes, the one companion of the traitor Wallace who has
hitherto escaped my vengeance. So, young sir, you have ventured
to brave my anger and to think yourself capable of coping with the
Lion of England."
"I have done my utmost, sir king," Archie said firmly, "such as
it was, for the freedom of my country. No traitor am I, nor was my
leader Wallace. Nor he, nor I, ever took vow of allegiance to you,
maintaining ever that the kings of England had neither claim nor
right over Scotland. He has been murdered, foully and dishonourably,
as you will doubtless murder me, and as you have killed many nobler
knights and gentlemen; but others will take our places, and so the
fight will go on until Scotland is free."
"Scotland will never be free," the king said with angry vehemence.
"Rather than that, she shall cease to exist, and I will slay till
there is not one of Scottish blood, man, woman, or child, to bear
the name. Let him be taken to Berwick," he said; "there let him be
exposed for a week in a cage outside the castle, that the people
may see what sort of a man this is who matches himself against the
might of England. Then let him be hung, drawn, and quartered, his
head sent to London, and his limbs distributed between four Scotch
cities."
"I go, sir king," Archie said, as the attendants advanced to seize
him, "and at the end of the week I will meet you before the throne
of God, for you, methinks, will have gone thither before me, and
there will I tax you with all your crimes, with the slaughter of
tens of thousands of Scottish men, women, and children, with cities
destroyed and countries wasted, and with the murder in cold blood
of a score of noble knights whose sole offence was that they fought
for their native country."
With these words Archie turned and walked proudly from the king's
presence. An involuntary murmur of admiration at his fearless bearing
escaped from the knights and nobles assembled round the couch of
the dying monarch.
When, two days later, Archie entered the gates of Berwick Castle
the bells of the city were tolling, for a horseman had just ridden
in with the news that Edward had expired on the evening before,
being the 6th day of July, 1307, just at the moment when he was
on the point of starting with the great army he had assembled to
crush out the insurrection in Scotland.
So deep was his hate for the people who had dared to oppose his will
that when dying he called before him his eldest son, and in the
presence of his barons caused him to swear upon the saints that so
soon as he should be dead his body should be boiled in a cauldron
until the flesh should be separated from the bones, after which the
flesh should be committed to the earth, but the bones preserved,
and that, as often as the people of Scotland rebelled, the military
array of the kingdom should be summoned and the bones carried at
the head of the army into Scotland. His heart he directed should
be conveyed to and deposited in the Holy Land.
So died Edward I, a champion of the Holy Sepulchre, King of England,
Lord of Ireland, Duke of Aquitaine, conqueror of Wales, and would
be conqueror of Scotland. In many respects his reign was a great
and glorious one, for he was more than a great conqueror, he was,
to England, a wise and noble king; and taken altogether he was
perhaps the greatest of the Plantagenets.
Historians have striven to excuse and palliate his conduct toward
Scotland. They have glossed over his crimes and tried to explain
away the records of his deeds of savage atrocity, and to show that
his claims to that kingdom, which had not a shadow of foundation
save from the submission of her Anglo-Norman nobles, almost all of
whom were his own vassals and owned estates in England, were just
and righteous. Such is not the true function of history. Edward's
sole claim to Scotland was that he was determined to unite under his
rule England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and he failed because
the people of Scotland, deserted as they were by all their natural
leaders, preferred death to such a slavery as that under which
Ireland and Wales helplessly groaned. His dying wishes were not
observed. His body was laid in rest in Westminster Abbey, and on
the tomb was inscribed, "Edward I the mallet of the Scots."