Braveheart (15 page)

But they had placed sentries at the perimeter of their camp; old Campbell had seen to that. Now he was lovingly honing broadswords to razor edges as he shared a whiskey jug with Hamish, who sat beside the fire next to William and looked from time to time at the darkness all around like a dog sniffing for danger.

For the last hour William had been staring, not at the glowing embers of the fire as Scots sharing whiskey were inclined to do but into the smoke rising above it, as fie he saw in its twists and curls some action unfolding there. But now he picked up a stick from the pile gathered to feed the fire, and brushing away the broken leaves that matted the forest floor, he began to scratch on the wet ground. It wasn’t writing; Hamish couldn’t read, but he knew letters when he saw them. These were patterns: squares, triangles, circles. Finally Hamish demanded, “What’re ya doing’?”

Old Campbell stopped what he was doing and sat down beside the fire. “Aye,” he said. “I’ve studied on the question myself. They have heavy cavalry. Armored horses that shake the very ground. We have spears and broadswords.”

“They’ll ride right over our formations,” Hamish said.

“Uncle Argyle and I used to talk about it,” William said. “No army in history has ever been able to stand before a charged of armored horse. No infantry has ever had the courage. And if they did stand, it wouldn’t be courage but foolishness. Without a barrier of fortifications, the horses are unstoppable. And if we are outnumbered, as we surely will be, then giving up maneuver by hiding behind earthworks is equally stupid, for the king’s archers would kill us all.”

“So we fight the Highland way,” old Campbell said. “Attack and run. Retreat into the hill country. Burn everything as we go. Leave nothing behind us for Longshanks’s army to eat.”

“And leave nothing behind worth fighting for.” William said. “What if we could win a victory? What if we could stand against the king’s whole army with an army of Scots?”

“Did your uncle tell you to think such things?” old Campbell wondered, peering at William from beneath a thicket of red bushy brows.

They looked to see half-dozen new volunteers being led in, blindfolded. William stood, flanked by Hamish and old Campbell. Ever since the action at Lanark, they had been receiving volunteers, who came to them through the old clan networks of Scottish resistance. More and more young men had been trying to join them as the story of William Wallace’s revolt was told and retold. Handling so many would-be rebels was becoming a problem for the secret network of trusted men in each village, who supplied William and his roving band with food, shelter, and information as they darted from place to place to stay ahead of the pursuit of the soldiers and the potential betrayal of any Scot who might be tempted by the ever-increasing reward money to sell information of Wallace’s whereabouts to the English. Old Campbell had had set up the security procedures; any man wishing to join Wallace’s band had to be know to the trusted villager who vouched for him, this was not foolproof, of course; men who could be counted on to stand beside in a fight or face torture without blurting your name to a captor might not be the best judges of character. The singleness of heart that made some men instinctively loyal made them blind to duplicity in other. Old Campbell knew there could be flaws in his network; William knew it, too.

So they looked over the volunteers the sentries brought in. All looked fit; none looked so fell fed that his sympathies might be suspect. Finally old Campbell gave a nod, and the sentries removed the blindfolds.

As the new recruits saw William Wallace for the first time, their faces glowed like the firelight. He was dirty like the others, his hair wet and tangles with leaves, his arms scratched, his skin pale from hiding by day and raiding by night. But they saw the fire inside him.

They recognized it. It was what they had come to follow. They rushed to him.

One of them, a tall slender man with the thick accent of western Scotland, fill upon his knees at William’s feet. “William Wallace!” the new recruit said, almost weeping with joy. “I have come to fight and die for you!”

“Stand up man. I’m not the pope,” William said.

“I am Faudron!” the new man spouted. “My sword is yours! And –and I bring you this tartan -----”

He reached into his cloak, but before he could produce whatever he had there, both Hamish and Campbell had drawn their swords and put the points to his neck.

“We checked them for arms,” the sentry told them.

Carefully, Faudron pulled out a beautiful tartan scarf and stretched it out to William. “It’s your family tartan! My wife wove it with her own hands.”

William looked down at the checked cloth – newer, more deeply colored, but the same design as the strip of cloth he had given Murron. For a moment all of William’s thoughts drained from his mind; his head felt like a bell struck by a phantom hammer, ringing with the echoes of his lost love. He stood mute as Faudron untied the tattered old woolen cloth that William had used for so long to keep the rain off the back of his neck and then urged the new one around his shoulders in replacement. Finally William found his voice. “Thank your wife for me,” he said to Faudron, and the new man seemed moved to see the gift so fondly accepted.

Then a new voice broke in.
“Him?
That can’t be William Wallace!
I’m
prettier than this man!”

They all looked at a slender, handsome young speaker, who spoke with the lilt of Ireland. He seemed to be talking not to any of them but to himself. The Irishman paused for a moment, frowned as if hearing instructions he could scarcely believe, and then burst forth again as if in reluctant compliance: “All right, Father, I’ll ask him!” The Irishman stared suddenly at William and demanded, “If I risk my neck for you, will I get a chance to kill Englishmen?”

“Is your poppa a ghost, or do you converse with God Almighty?” Hamish asked scowling.

“In order to find his equal, an Irishman is forced to talk to God!” the newcomer declared. Then, apparently hearing more instructions unperceived by everyone else, he shouted, “Yes Father!” Turning back to William, he announced, “The Almighty says don’t change the subject, just answer the fookin’ question.”

“Insane Irish –“ Campbell said.

The newcomer whipped a dagger from his sleeve, and with a speed that surprised everyone, he put the blade against Campbell’s throat. “Smart enough to get a dagger past your guards old man,” the Irishman said. But then he froze as he felt the steel of a broadsword against his own neck. Not daring to twitch, for the edge of the sword was already biting into his flesh and the sword had slipped from it's scabbard with such speed it was frightening, the Irishman’s eyes traced the steel into the hard, hungry hand of William Wallace. Behind the sword’s hilt, Wallace was smiling.

“That’s my friend, Irishman!” Wallace said. “And the answer’s yes. You fight fro me, you kill the English.”

“Excellent!” the Irishman said, lifting his dagger away from old Campbell’s throat and stepping back from him. “Stephen is my name. I’m the most wanted man on Emerald Isle. Except I’m not on the Emerald Isle, of course, more’s the pity.”

The Irishman shrugged and handed the blade over, handle first. Wallace shook his head and moved back to the fire. “When you prove you can last through the cold and the hunger and the lack of sleep, we’ll give you a chance to prove you can fight as well as you talk,” he said, and the sentries took the newcomers to find their own spaces.

27

A COLUMN OF ENGLISH LIGHT CAVALRY – A HUNDRED riders -- moved in ordered formation across a field of bluebells, lush in the Scottish summer. At the head of the column was English Lord Dolecroft, and as he rode, he twisted in his saddle to admire the precision he had maintained among his men. For three cool wet months they had pursued William Wallace and his band of rebels through the counties between Edinburgh and Glasgow. They had felt themselves so close to their enemy, they had found fires still smoldering. Only a week before they had come upon a campsight so hastily abandoned that they discovered meat cooked but uneaten and knew, here in this hungry land, just how close that meant they had come. But they had never seen their prey. Still his men maintained their discipline; they kept their horses healthy, their weapons sharp; they did not straggle. Dolecroft knew that sooner or later this would pay off. It had to.

Just as he had this thought, the scout at the head of his column gave a low whistle, and Dolecroft spun back to see five Scots trudge out of the forest up ahead. Even at that distance Dolecroft could see they were exhausted men. They walked on wobbly legs, clearly weakened from hunger; they hadn’t even lifted their eyes to see the English column. Even so, they were in a formation of their own, a huge redheaded brute at the center of a V formation, as if they were the vanguard of a larger band. Dolecroft stared, scarcely able to breathe. It was as if he could halt his men right there on the road, and the spent Scottish outlaws would march right onto the points of the English spears.

Then the Scots saw them; the big redhead staggered, spun round, snatched at the men on either side of him, and virtually hurled them back toward the forest from which they’d come. The startled Scots ran like frightened deer, and Dolecroft know instantly that they had just made their second blunder – this one fatal –for in tier surprise they were leading him straight back to their main band, possibly even to Wallace himself!

The scout was waving wildly, but it was unnecessary; every rider in the column had seen the Scots already. “After them!” Dolecroft shouted and spurred his horse.

Hamish and his men –for it was Hamish that Dolecroft had seen – changed direction, but the English scout spotted them crossing a hilltop and led the column after them.

Scrambling over rocks, tripping and falling, tumbling downhill and clawing their way up again, the emaciated Scots ran for their lives. The English horsemen galloped in pursuit, closing the gap quickly. The Scots changed direction onto rockier ground. Dolecroft shouted the order, “Patience! Mind the footing!” and his experienced rides slowed their pace so their horses could handle the harder footing without danger and still drew nearer their prey.

Hamish now made his final blunder, leading his men in panic across an open field surrounded by low hills. The Scots were boxed in; there was no escape. Dolecroft felt a passing pang of disappointment that the feeling men had not led him to the heart of the whole band, but they could still take one or two of these harried men alive, and who could say what a little torture might reveal? Dolecroft spurred his horse on, and his whole column charged into the open field.

The English scout was the first to notice something wrong. His horse was staggering, having difficulty with the footing. “We’re in a bog!” the scout shouted.

And so they were. The Scots, bounding from grassy clump to grassy clump like rabbits through a familiar field, were trotting along with surprising ease, but the horses were miring halfway up their forelegs in the soggy earth. This was not comforting to the hoses; it made them jittery. “Here, it's firm this way—“ Dolecroft called.

But as soon as they moved toward the firm ground, fifty Scots appeared on he crest of the hill on the far side of the bog. A grizzled redhead –old Campbell ----stood at the front, and he was smiling. On the hills to the left and the right more Scots appeared; the English were boxed in the bog. Dolecroft wheeled and looked to his rear; and there stood William Wallace, his broadsword resting on his shoulder, fifty more Scots behind him.

Dolecroft scarcely had time to realize his blunder. Wallace lifted his broadsword, screamed, and led the charge. The Scots swarmed in from all directions; the English horses could barely move, the bog sucked at their hooves. Wallace’s broadsword swung so fast that it blurred in steel and blood.

It was a slaughter.

When Lord Pickering, head of the English occupational army in Stirling Castle, was handed new of the disaster, he was dipping his fingertips into a bowl of berries sent to him by the king himself, who was campaigning in France. Lord Pickering read the message and his face turned as white as the porcelain bowl. “Another ambush! My God! ………What about our infiltrator?” he asked his assistant.

“He has already joined them, m’lord,” his assistant told him.

Pickering sat back and calculated. If their infiltrator had already joined the Scottish rebels, then he was with them during the ambush. So they would trust him. He could get close to Wallace. The plan was working.