How careful should young people be to perform the resolutions of correcting their evil habits which they make at moments when sickness or adversity brings them to a recollection of their evil propensities.
Yet, alas! how often is it that such promises are forgotten, as soon as they find themselves in a condition to repeat their faults.
Thus it was with Prince Edwin. Instead of seeking the a.s.sistance of a higher power than his own weak will to strengthen and support him in the right path, he contented himself with saying, "I am determined to begin a fresh course; to correct my hasty, imperious temper; to pursue my studies steadily and perseveringly; and to shun the society of those who, by flattery and false speaking, seek to increase my foolish vanity, and impede my improvement!"
Now it was easy to say all this, but very difficult to put these good resolutions into practice. Prince Edwin, neglecting to implore the Divine aid to strengthen him in their performance, soon yielded to temptation, and in a little time, listened to the pernicious flatteries of Brithric with as much pleasure as he had done before the period of his sickness.
It was to no purpose that the faithful Wilfrid remonstrated with him, and pointed out the fatal consequences that result from listening to the false commendations of those who pay no regard to truth. Prince Edwin loved to hear himself praised, even for those very qualities in which he was most deficient. He grew weary of Wilfrid"s admonitions, and frequently reproved him when he ventured to reason with him, or attempted to offer the counsel of a true friend.
Brithric was, as I said before, much older than the prince or any of the royal wards. He was artful and ambitious, and had formed in his heart a wicked project for his own advancement, which was too likely to plunge the country into the horrors of a civil war. This project was no less than that of attempting to induce Prince Edwin to set himself up for king, and to claim the throne as the eldest legitimate son of the late King Edward.
In all this, Brithric was very ungrateful to King Athelstane, who had been very kind to him, and had recently appointed him to the honorable office of his cup-bearer. That employment, however, was not sufficient to content Brithric, who perceived that King Athelstane was too wise a prince to listen to artful flattery or to allow any person of his court to obtain an undue influence over his mind.
"Ah!" said Brithric to himself, "if Edwin were king, I should be his chief favorite. Wealth and honors would be at my disposal; and as he believes everything I say to him I should be able to govern him, and persuade him to do whatever I wished."
Brithric had soon an opportunity of introducing this treasonable project to Prince Edwin; for King Athelstane sent him with a letter to the head of the college; and as soon as he had delivered it he paid a visit to Prince Edwin, whom he found in his own chamber, engaged with Wilfrid in brightening his arrows.
"So, Brithric," said the prince, "do you bring me an invitation to the court of the king, my brother?"
Brithric shook his head, and replied, "No, my prince; King Athelstane has no wish to see you there. Take my word for it, he will never give you an invitation to his court."
"Why not?" asked Prince Edwin, reddening with sudden anger.
"King Athelstane knows that you have a better t.i.tle to the throne than himself," replied Brithric. "He knows, also, that were his valiant Thames and Ealdormen to see you, they would be very likely to make you king; for you are possessed of far more princely qualities than the base-born Athelstane."
The eyes of Prince Edwin brightened at the words of Brithric, and he grasped the arrow which he had in his hand with the air of one who holds a sceptre. "Fie, Brithric," said Wilfrid, "how can you be so treacherous to your royal master as to speak of him with such disrespect, and to put such dangerous and criminal ideas into the mind of Prince Edwin?"
"Peace, meddling brat," cried Edwin, angrily; "who asked counsel of thee in this matter?"
"There are some things which it would be a crime to hear in silence,"
replied Wilfrid; "and I implore you, my dear, dear lord, by all the love that once united you and your faithful page in the bonds of friendship, not to listen to the fatal suggestions of the false Brithric."
"False Brithric!" echoed the wily tempter; "I will prove myself the true friend of the Atheling, if he will only give consent to the deed by which I will make him this very day the lord of England."
"Impossible," cried the prince; "you have no power to raise me to the throne of my father Edward, albeit it is my lawful inheritance."
"The usurper Athelstane knows that full well," observed Brithric.
"Therefore it is that you are kept here, like a bird in a cage, leading a life of monkish seclusion in an obscure college, instead of learning to wield the battleaxe, to hurl the spear, and rein the war-horse, like a royal Saxon prince."
"The wily tyrant shall find that Edwin the Atheling is not to be so treated," exclaimed the prince, yielding to a burst of pa.s.sion.
"You have no remedy, my lord," said Brithric; "for the people love the usurper, and know nothing of his imprisoned brother, Edwin, the rightful king of England."
"And shall I always be immured, like a captived thrush?" asked Edwin, indignantly.
"Yes, while Athelstane lives, you must expect no other fate," said Brithric. "But what if Athelstane should die?" continued he, fixing his eyes on the face of the prince.
"Oh! hear him not, my lord," cried Wilfrid, flinging himself at the Atheling"s feet; "he would tempt you to a crime as deadly as that of Cain."
"Peace, son of Cendric, the traitor!" exclaimed Prince Edwin, leveling at the same time a blow at his faithful page, which felled him to the earth, where he lay covered with blood, and apparently without sense or motion.
"And now speak on, my loving Brithric," continued the Atheling, without paying the slightest regard to the condition of poor Wilfrid, who was, however, perfectly aware of all that was pa.s.sing, though, to all appearance, insensible.
"My lord," said Brithric, drawing nearer to the Atheling, "I will now speak plainly. I am the cup-bearer of King Athelstane, and the next time I present the red wine to him at the banquet it shall be drugged with such a draught as shall make Prince Edwin lord of England within an hour after the usurper has swallowed it."
"Traitor, begone!" exclaimed the prince, filled with horror at this dreadful proposal. "I would not stain my soul with the crime of murder, if by such means I could obtain the empire of the world."
Brithric used many wicked arguments to induce Prince Edwin to consent to the murder of his royal brother; but Edwin commanded him to leave his presence, and never to presume to enter it again. The vile wretch, however, alarmed lest the prince should inform the king of the crime he had meditated against him, went to his royal master and accused the Atheling of having endeavored to persuade him to mix poison in the wine cup of his sovereign.
Athelstane, justly indignant at the crime laid to the charge of his royal brother, came with a party of guards to the college. Here, before his preceptors and all the royal wards, his companions, he charged Edwin with having meditated the crime of treason and fratricide.
You may imagine the consternation of the prince on hearing this dreadful accusation. It was to no purpose that he protested his innocence, and called on all his faithful a.s.sociates to witness for him that he had never uttered an injurious thought against the king. Those who had been most ready to flatter him were silent on this occasion, for they perceived that King Athelstane was persuaded of his brother"s guilt; and some of them said, "They remembered that Prince Edwin had often said that he had a better t.i.tle to the throne than King Athelstane."
Prince Edwin could not deny that he had used these words; but it seemed to him very hard that they should be repeated to the king in the hour of his sore distress. Looking around, with a countenance expressive of mingled sorrow and indignation, he said,--
"Unhappy that I am! they that were my most familiar friends are they that speak against me! Is there no one that can bear me witness that I am guiltless of the crime of plotting to take away my brother"s life?"
"I will, though I die for it!" cried a voice, feeble from bodily suffering, but firm in the courageous utterance of truth. It was that of Wilfrid, the page, who, with his countenance still pale and disfigured from the effects of the blow received from Prince Edwin, stood boldly forward to bear witness of the scene which had taken place in his presence between Brithric and the prince.
"Oh, Wilfrid, generous Wilfrid," cried Edwin, bursting into tears, "how n.o.bly do you fulfill the precepts of your heavenly Master by returning good for evil!"
Now Athelstane had been so deeply prejudiced against his unfortunate brother by the wicked Brithric, that he would not listen to Wilfrid"s honest evidence. When, therefore, he heard that he was the son of the traitor Cendric, who had been so deeply implicated in Alfred"s plot, he was so unjust as to believe all that Brithric said against him.
Accordingly, he took Wilfrid, as well as the young Atheling, and carried them prisoners to London. He there put them on board a ship that was lying in the river Thames, and when night came, set sail with them and went out to sea.
CHAPTER IV.
Prince Edwin was not greatly alarmed, for he thought the king, his brother, was only going to banish him to some foreign country, where he fondly thought that Wilfrid and himself might live together very happily. But when they were out of sight of land, and the moon had risen over a wild waste of stormy billows, the king had both the prisoners brought upon deck, and he then ordered the captain to put them into a small boat and set them adrift at the mercy of the winds and waves.
It was to no purpose that the wretched Edwin threw himself at his brother"s feet, and entreated for mercy. Athelstane only replied, "You tried to persuade my faithful cup-bearer to take my life--your own life, therefore, is forfeited; but, as you are the son of my royal father, I will not shed your blood upon the scaffold. I commit you and your guilty companion, the son of the traitor Cendric, to the mercy of G.o.d, who can and will preserve the innocent if it be his good pleasure so to do."
"And to His mercy, not thine, O king! do I, in full confidence of innocence, commend both myself and my unfortunate master," said Wilfrid, as the seamen hurried him, with the weeping Atheling, over the side of the vessel into the little boat that lay tossing and rocking among the tempestuous billows.
When the unhappy youths found themselves alone, without sails or rudder, on the pathless ocean, they sank into each other"s arms and wept long and pa.s.sionately.
At length Wilfrid lifted up his voice and heart in fervent prayer to that Almighty and merciful G.o.d, who had delivered Daniel from the lions" den, and preserved his faithful servants, Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego, unharmed in the fiery furnace. Prince Edwin, on the contrary, gave himself up to despair, and when he saw the king"s ship spreading her canvas to the gale, and fast receding from his sight, he uttered a cry that was heard above the uproar of the winds and waves.
Starting up in the boat, and extending his arms toward the disappearing vessel, he unwittingly lost his balance, and was in a moment ingulfed in the stormy billows.
We may imagine the anguish and terror of Wilfrid on witnessing the sad fate of his young lord, which he had no power to prevent. Thoughts of his widowed mother"s grief for himself, too, came over his mind and filled his eyes with tears, for her, as well as for his ill-fated lord.
For himself, however, he felt no fears, even in this dreadful hour, when left companionless on the tempestuous ocean, for his trust was firm and steadfast in the mercies of his Heavenly Father.
That night the winds roared, and the waves raged mightily. Many a gallant bark foundered in the storm, and many a skillful seaman found a watery grave before the morning dawned in the cloudy horizon. But the frail vessel into which the unfortunate Atheling and his page had been thrust, weathered the gale and, with her lonely tenant, Wilfrid, was driven ash.o.r.e at a place called Whitesande, on the coast of Picardy, in France.
When Wilfrid landed, he was drenched through and through. He was hungry, too, and sorrowful and weary. He knew not where he was, but he failed not to return thanks to that gracious G.o.d who had preserved him from the perils of the raging seas to which he had been so awfully exposed, and whose merciful providence, he doubted not, would guide and sustain him in the strange land whither he had been conducted.
Thus meekly, thus n.o.bly, did the young page support himself under this fresh trial. But when the remembrance of the unfortunate Atheling, his royal master, came over him, his heart melted within him; he bowed his face on his knees as he sat all lonely on the sea beach, and he wept aloud, exclaiming--
"Oh, Edwin! royal Edwin! hadst thou patiently trusted in the mercy of G.o.d thou slightest, notwithstanding thy late adversity, have lived to wear the crown of thy father Edward." Overpowered by his emotions, he again sank upon the ground.
"Is it of Edwin of England that thou speakest, young Saxon?" asked a soft voice in the sweet familiar language of his own native land.