The young Sir John Comyn had loved the orphan Yolande, and on his return had secretly wished to meet—perhaps, for all that we can learn now—to espouse her; but this terrible catastrophe ended his life and intentions together.
Meanwhile, like a true Scottish baron bent on selfish schemes of family ambition and degrading aggrandizement, Red Comyn had ridden fast to meet Robert Bruce, the younger, at Dumfries, and to concert with him a pretended plan to free Scotland from the English and from John Baliol; but of this scheme the red-headed traitor had duly informed King Edward from time to time. On Comyn's arrival in Nithsdale, the gallant Robert, afterwards King of Scotland, had fled in safety northward, by reversing his horse's hoofs, as the ground was covered with snow; and being furnished with clear proofs of his compatriot's villainy, he pursued him to the church of the Minorites at Dumfries, whither he had fled for sanctuary, being full of conscious guilt; but neither the house of God nor its high altar could protect this perfidious wretch, who was false to Scotland and her people; and the prophecy that "Red Comyn should die by a violent death" was terribly fulfilled; for there Bruce, Lindsay, and Kirkpatrick buried their daggers in his heart upon St. William's day, the 10th of February, 1306.
So perish all who are false to their country!
He was the last Comyn of the house of Badenoch, and was, moreover, the last of his race—a race which Scotland well could spare.
Lady Gwendoleyne never spoke after she was borne into the castle with the dead body of her son. She lived for five years a close captive in that yellow chamber, and during those terrible five years a word, even of prayer, never passed her lips; but a period was put to her sufferings, for this proud and resentful beauty died on the 10th day of February, 1310, at the hour of three in the afternoon, the anniversary of the very moment in which her husband died under the three daggers in the Minorite Church of Dumfries.
She was buried before the Shrine of St. Ninian, with all the grandeur of a princess and all the splendour of the Roman ritual; her son slept by her side, and Sir Alexander of Cavers reared a stately monument above them; but that fierce woman's restless spirit is still said to haunt the Castle of Kirkintulloch and the Roman ruins at the west end of the town; for it is supposed that she will never find repose or peace until the day of doom.
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Such was the story told to the captain by the castellan of the old fortress of Kirkintulloch, scarcely one stone of which now stands upon another, as it was removed about the beginning of the present century.
"And Yolande Gifford—what of her?" asked the captain.
"She did not die of love or grief either, but lived to be a very old woman, and passed away in about her eightieth year, when Robert III. was King, a prioress of the Bernardine nuns of St. Mary—a convent of which you may still see the ruins on the north bank of the Avon, about a mile above Linlithgow Bridge."