Braveheart (25 page)

But the storm of Wallace’s anger had already begun. He shouted at Craig, at all of them. “We won at Stirling and still you quibbled! We won at York and you would not support us! If you will not stand with us now, then I say you are cowards! And if you are Scotsmen, I am ashamed to call myself one!” With that the tossed the crossbow onto the ground at their feet, like a gauntlet, daring them.

The nobles, all of them carrying swords and daggers, gripped the handles of their weapons. Hamish and his father stepped up shoulder to shoulder with Wallace, while Stephen’s dagger silently from his belt and snuggled against the throat of the noble nearest him.

Robert the Bruce, backed by Mornay, jumped between Wallace and the nobles. “Stop! Everyone stop! Please, sir William! Speak with me alone! I beg you!”

Robert was the one man capable of drawing Wallace away from the confrontation; he was the only noble Wallace had any desire to listen to. They moved a dozen paces in the direction of the shield impaled by the crossbow bold. Stephen showed away the man he had seized, ad he moved to join the Campbells in glowering at the nobles and begging, any and all, to step forward and fight.

When the Bruce had urged Wallace far enough away that they could speak in confidence, he turned and spoke in a suppressed but passionate voice. “Sir William, please listen to me! You have achieved more than anyone dreamed. You’ve made all of Scotland and all of England as well stand and wonder at what you’ve done! But fighting these odds now” – he gestured at the shield pierced by the bolt - “this looks like rage, not courage. Peace offers its rewards! Has war become a habit you cannot break?”

The question struck deep in Wallace. For a moment his eyes flickered away toward the juncture of the green hills with the gray sky, as if everyone he had loved and lost had just moved beyond that horizon. But when he looked back to Bruce, his eyes were not dreamy but blazing with life. “War finds me willing,” Wallace said. “I know it won’t bring back all I have lost. But it can bring what none of us have ever had: a country of our own. For that we need a king. We need you.”

It was Bruce’s turn to pause and swallow. “I am trying,” he said.

“Then you tell me what a king is! Is he a man who believes only what others believe? Is he one who calculates the numbers for and against him but never weighs the strength in his own heart? There is strength in you. I see it. I know it.”

Robert the Bruce was both moved and ashamed to hear these words from William Wallace. Seeing this, Wallace pressed him further.

“These men are like all the others, they need a leader!” Wallace said. “They will never accept me, but they will you! Lead them! Lead us all.”

Robert stared at Wallace. Wide-eyed, breathless, the young nobleman seemed unable to move. Finally he said, “I must…consult with my father.”

“And I will consult with mine.”

Saying that, Wallace strode back to the main group of nobles. He glared around at all of them. Then his eyes changed, showing less anger, and more pity. “When Longshanks invades us again,” he said in a quieter voice, “the commoners are going to fight. I don’t believe I could stop them even if I wished to. When they fight, I will lead them. We need you. Even if you all come, it may not be enough, but whether all of you come or none do, we will fight. And stand or fall, live or die, whichever we do, we will do it for Scotland.”

Wallace left the field, his friends behind him, never more proud than they had been at that moment.

45

Robert the Bruce did not ride straight back to his castle. He took a long detour and did not explain to his personal bodyguard the reason. He rode silently in front of them, so insensible to the countryside around them that the captain of his guards wondered whether his master might even be unaware they were so far off their normal route home. But when he inquired, after passing through another crossroad, whether his lordship had intended to take the fork that led ever further from their castle, the Bruce nodded and kept on riding. They stopped once in a village, where the Bruce asked directions of a tavernkeeper, and once more along a farm road where a herdsman listened to his soft inquires and pointed the way.

At last they reached a small valley, marred by the shells of farm buildings burned out and never rebuilt. Robert ordered his men to remain there beside the charred rubble, and he rode over the hill alone.

To Murron’s grave.

At the ragged hole that once held Murron’s body, Robert the Bruce dismounted and stared at the barren cavity. It gaped there like an empty eye socket, among the other, undisturbed, grave. The Bruce had heard the story of Wallace riding in through the English ambush and pulling her body from the earth to bury it in a place where no enemy could find it. So the story was true.

He held the reins of this lathered horse and lifted his eyes from the grave to it's stone marker and the delicate lines of the chiseled thistle he frowned as if this was too much to understand. He mounted up and rode away.

In the faint nimbus of the single candle, young Robert sat across from his leper father in his father’s darkened room. Young Robert reported every word of the meeting at Edinburgh, even what he had said in private to William Wallace. His father had listened with his yellowed eyes wet so droopy that it would scarcely have surprised young Robert if those eyes had fallen out of the decaying head and popped onto the table. But finally his father had spoken, telling young Bruce what course he must take. And now the son gripped his own head as if stunned by a blow.

“This…… cannot be the way,” He said to his father.

But the old man’s brain, behind those loose, weak eyes, as still as keen as ever; if anything, the endless hours he spent alone, hiding his leprosy, had only make that brain more keen. “Wallace will not survive; he cannot!” The elder Bruce said. “He can never lead this country. The nobles will not support him!”

“But, Father ---“

“Everything is clear, Robert. Everything. Think of all you have told me, of everything you’ve seen and thought, and you will know this situation as clearly as I do. William Wallace wishes to spill every drop of blood in his body for the sake of Scotland. But that will not make us free.”

Heartsick, the father reached across the table, then stayed his arm, unwilling to touch his son with his leperous hand.

“My son. Look at me. I cannot be king. You, and you alone, can rule Scotland. What I tell you, you must do – for yourself and for your country.”

Young Robert held his father with his eyes and did not look away.

46

The plains of Falkirk lay not far from Stirling. Had the mists not been so heavy that morning, Wallace could have looked into the distance and seen the hill where the castle stood and the smaller one opposite it, where he had rallied the Scots to victory.

Longshanks had chosen to assemble his army upon a different field, not only fleeing the ghosts of that last defeat but escaping the battlefields features of river and bridge that Wallace had used so effectively the first time.

Wallace did not like this ground. It was open and smooth and offered no natural obstacles he could use for maneuver and strategy to neutralize the superior numbers of the English. He wanted to fight anywhere but here. Stirling would have suited him again, with it's bridge and he could seal and its river he could use to be out of range of the arrows. When his scouts told him where the English were heading, his first thought had been to slide the Scottish army back, pull the English into a forest, a bog, a hillside, an ambush, to choose his own day and his own ground.

But the roving bands of Highland clansmen discovered the English army for themselves, and when word was passed through the Scottish ranks that the enemy was close, it was more than their instincts could bear. They moved in the direction of Falkirk without ever receiving he order to march and in fact did not march at all but raced to the battlefield, each clan competing to be the first in position to fall on their hated foes and drive them from the land.

Wallace and his lieutenants rode to the highest ground they could find and looked out over the wide smooth stretch of grass that was about to become a vast killing field. Wallace was grave.

He heard the Highlanders chanting, banging their shields in high sprits only segments of the English army were visible through the mists, but it was clear they were there in great numbers. The Highlanders were unafraid; the more English to kill, the better.

Old Campbell looked at Wallace’s grim face and said, “If we don’t begin the battle soon, the clans will start it for themselves.”

Wallace looked toward the crest of the next hill to his left. Mornay was there at the head of his cavalry. Of all the nobles, only Mornay had come. But he had brought nearly a hundred rides, all armed and battle-ready. “At least we have Mornay,” Hamish said.

Wallace looked to the hill on his right. It was bar. He had sent a message to the Bruce asking him to anchor the right of the Scottish battle line, but he had received no reply. Seeing Wallace’s face as he gazed toward the empty hill, Hamish said, “The Bruce is not coming, William.”

“Mornay has come. So will Bruce.”

There was no time to send more messages, no time to argue, no time to plead. There would be no negotiations at this battle; it would all be settled with blood. Wallace peered across the field, trying to see the English positions, trying to see all the way to Longshanks and into his mind. “They will attack first,” he said. “That’s what I would do, before we can get set, before any of our reinforcements reach us.”

Hamish wanted to argue that there would be no reinforcements, but William seemed so sure there would be, as if he could, by believing strongly enough, make the Bruce appear from the mists. Wallace began giving orders, deploying his troops. Looking to Hamish and old Campbell he said, “You lead the schiltrons into the center of the field; we can’t let them charge through our middle.” He turned to Stephen, “You back the spearmen with the infantry. Tell the Highlanders to charge with their broadswords against anything that approaches the schiltrons.” He seized a mounted messenger by the shoulder. “Tell Mornay to watch for the ranks of crossbowmen. He must charge their flanks at the first sign of them on the field. Now go!”

Everyone hurried to take their places. Wallace looked toward the bare hill, where the Bruce was to be. It was Scotland’s most desperate hour. Everything was against them now. And yet if the Bruce would come, if they could stand together, noble and common, on that fields, then whatever else happened would be Scotland’s victory in the eyes of William Wallace.

Longshanks and his generals sat in their saddles, arrayed for battle, banners flying, pikes at attention, faceplates lowered, all ready for battle. And yet they waited. There was no hurry at all. Longshanks was anxious to see the battle begin, but he waited – precisely because he wised to see it. Until the mists lifted, he would not begin.

It was not long before the winds began to rise. Banks of fog, like low clouds, drifted before their eyes, then opened to reveal the Scots streaming into the plain before them. Longshanks studied the schiltrons that had so decimated his last army. He marveled at them. Fourteen-foot spears. Such a simple idea. Yet no one had ever tried it before. Because it took courage to stand there before the charge, stand and
believe
the idea would work when no one had ever seen it work before.

He stood across the field and in the lifting mists he saw the man who had lit the fire of faith and courage and had spread it among his people: William Wallace, alone now on his horse, watching his army move forward.

Longshanks lifted his visor so that his voice could be heard by all around him. “Whatever else happens today, I want William Wallace. Dead or alive. But I want him.”

With a wave of his royal hand, Longshanks sent his army forward.

Wallace saw Longshanks through the break in the mists, saw him stretch forth his long thin arm and wave his troops forward. Longshanks, his enemy, within sight. He could see the king’s cold hatred in the slow, almost languid deliberateness of the gesture. So many men on both sides being sent to their deaths with a dispassionate wave that said,
“I am king; it is my will that you give your lives to my purposes, so let us get on with it.”

Wallace spurred his horse down to join Stephen among the ranks of the Scottish swordsmen, behind the schiltrons. “Do you see them yet?” he called, reining to a stop besides his Irish friend.

Stephen was scanning the mists all around the edges of the field. “No, I ….. Wait, there!” Wallace looked in the direction Stephen pointed, and sure enough, Stephen was right: moving up toward the schiltrons were blocks of crossbowmen.

The bowmen were still far out of range, even with their new weapons. Stephen shouted for his men to hold their positions; the cavalry would charge them first, then the infantry, hoping to confuse the crossbowmen and diffuse their fire. With Scots bearing down on them from two directions, the Englishmen with their unfamiliar weapons would surely break and run.

But as the crossbowmen marched nearer and the stillness of impending battle descended upon the fields Wallace heard a haunting noise. “Do you hear that?” he said to Stephen.

Stephen nodded and strained harder to peer through the veil of mist. There, behind the bowmen, he saw the blocks of Longshanks’s infantry, wearing kilts and marching to bagpipes. Irish troops.

Stephen of Ireland stared at the approach of his countrymen. Wallace spurred his rose up beside him. Stephen lowered his eyes, ashamed. “So that’s where Longshanks got his solders,” Stephen said. “Irishmen, willing to kill Scottish cousins for the English.”

“Their families are starving, Stephen. They’ll feed them however they can. If you don’t want to fight them –“

“No, I’ll stand with you.”

Stephen raised his eyes. They were bright with tears. He drew his sword and walked to the head of the Scottish infantry. Wallace was sue he would never see him alive again.