Braveheart (32 page)

"Then why did you come?"

"Why did you?"

"Because of the way you're looking at me now. The same way … as when we met."

He turned his face away. She moved to him, touched his check gently, and pulled his face toward her again. "I know," she said. "You looked at me… and saw her."

He twisted suddenly back toward the window. He was leaving.

"You must forgive me what I feel!" she said. "No man has ever looked at me as you did."

He stopped and looked back to her.

"You have … you have a husband," he said.

"I have taken vows. More than one. I've vowed faithfulness to by husband and sworn to give him a son. And I cannot keep both promises."

Slowly, he began to realize just what she was asking of him, and an unexpected smile played at his lips. Her smile lit up also. "you understand," she said. "Consider, before you laugh and say no. You will never own a throne, though you deserve one. But just as the sun will rise tomorrow, some man will rule England. And what if his veins ran not with the blood of Longshanks but with that of a true king?"

"I cannot love you for a sake of revenge," he said quietly.

"No. But can you love me for the sake of all you loved and lost? Or simply love me … because I love you?"

Slowly, he reached to the candleflame and pinched it out.

60

THE FIRST RAYS OF MORNING SPREAD YELLOW LIGHT through the room and across their faces, their bodies limp and entwined upon the warm and tousled blankets of the straw-mattressed bed. Wallace awoke with a start: sunlight!

He grabbed for his clothes, as she, too, awoke suddenly; she covered herself with the blanket and jumped out of bed, rushing to the window to look out, then drawing back quickly. “No one! Hurry!” she said.

He hurried to the window, leaned out, and saw a clear path down the wall to safety. He saw no guards along the base of the wall, no one between the castle foundation and the far rill where he had hidden his horse—and yet it was past dawn, already fully day!

In her arms he had lost all sense of danger, all sense of anything but her. And as much as he needed now to hurry, he stopped and turned to her and touched her face one last time.

He climbed out onto the ledge of the window. She touched his arm, and he lingered again. She had to ask him: “When we… did you think of her?”

He looked straight into her eyes and kissed her, not Murron—and climbed out.

She stood in the window and watched him all the way down the wall, across the heather, to the rill, until he was out of sight.

On his way back from the castle, William stopped at the secret grove where Murron lay. He remained there alone for many hours.

Night had fallen when he reached the cave and found Hamish and Stephen huddled by the fire, drinking whisky. They watched as he tied his horse beside theirs and took his place at the fire. He said nothing.

“Scouting?” Hamish asked, though he knew where his friend had gone.

Still Wallace said nothing. Stephen offered him the jug, but Wallace shook his head and stared at the fire.

When the fire had burned to smoldering ash, and Hamish and Stephen lay asleep, Wallace still sat awake. Without sleep and without dreams.

When Hamish heard a rustling and opened his eyes to the chill gray light of dawn, he saw William saddling his horse. Hamish punched Stephen, who opened his bleary eyes and squinted painfully at the same sight. Instinctively both men lurched to their feet, staggering with their hangover.

“Too fookin’ early!” Stephen groaned.

“Tell it ta God,” Hamish mumbled.

“He ain’t up yet,” Stephen said.

Wallace mounted and rode off; Hamish and Stephen had to scramble to catch him.

61

THAT VERY AFTERNOON THEY ATTACKED AN ENGLISH TAXAtion post, though it was broad daylight and the post was guarded by a dozen soldiers. Only a few stood to fight; the rest ran in all directions, recognizing the figure who charged them as the unkillable Scottish terror, William Wallace.

With the post still flaming behind them, Wallace led them on toward the garrison where the tax collectors were headquartered, reaching it before any of the escaped soldiers could and burning it to the ground as well. William, Hamish, and Stephen had more help than they needed; the villagers, when they saw Wallace riding past, his blond hair flying and his broad-sword bright with blood, dropped what they were doing and ran to follow him.

They attacked for two days without sleep, zigzagging through the countryside, striking out at everything that represented Longshanks and his royal domination. On the second night Hamish and Stephen convinced William to steal a few hours sleep in the wool shed of a farmer they had known for many years, a clansman who had fought beside them at Stirling. But again William was up before the dawn, seeking more royal soldiers to attack and drive from his country.

They camped in the forest that night, bone weary, eating the few bits of bread and dried meat the farmer had been able to spare them. And once again, Wallace sat staring at the fire.

“Rest, William,” Hamish pleaded.

“I rest,” William said.

“Your rest is making me exhausted.”

Stephen offered the jug; Wallace shook his head. “Come,” Stephen urged, “it’ll help you sleep.”

“Aye. But it won’t let me dream,” William said.

He pulled a tattered tartan around himself and lay down.

62

THAT SAME NIGHT LONGSHANKS SAT BY A PALACE HEARTH, where a huge blaze burned. Still he was huddled beneath a blanket, and he coughed blood. But he ignored the ice in his lungs; his mind was plotting.

The princess walked her parapets alone, lost in her own thoughts.

Wallace lay in the forest, dreamless beneath the stars.

And Robert the Bruce climbed reluctantly to the uppermost room of his father’s castle, summoned by a servant who said it was the old man’s urgent request that he come. Robert reached the door, found it unlocked, and entered without waiting. Moving into the suffocating darkness, heavy with his reluctance to be there, Robert took his seat across from his father, already at the table. The single candle burned between them, and in its light young Bruce saw that his father was cloaked more heavily than before. “You wished to see me, Father?”

“Yes. We both did.”

Robert heard a movement behind him and spun around to see Craig, leader of the Scottish council, standing against the wall behind Robert. Young Bruce was surprised to see that his father had revealed his disease to the old noble.

“Yes, I’ve shown him,” the elder Bruce said. “I’m dying anyway, no use to hide. But Longshanks, too, is failing. We are becoming the past—as you become the future.” The leper, feeling the weight of his infirmity—or was it the weight of something else? –sagged back and looked to Craig, who shifted forward, but only a half step; clearly he did not wish to be too close.

“Our nobles are frightened and confused,” Craig said. “Wallace has the commoners stirred up again, from the Highland clans to the Lowland villages. In another six months Christ and the Apostles could not govern this country.”

Robert glanced to his father; it was clear to the younger Bruce that his father had already been discussing something with Craig, and the two ancient noblemen, veterans of many decades of politics together, had agreed on something, something Craig was about to present.

But Craig was working up to it gradually. “Longshanks knows his son will scarcely be able to rule England, much less half of France. He needs Scotland settled, and he trusts you, after Falkirk. If you pay him homage, he will recognize you as king of Scotland. Our nobles have agreed to this as well.”

From within his woolen wrap, he withdrew and extended a parchment bearing the noblest names in Scotland. Young Bruce barely glanced at it and said, “If I pay homage to another’s throne, then how am I a king?”

“Homage is nothing!” Craig said impatiently. “It is the crown that matters!”

But young Bruce was intense with new clarity and the strength that came with it. “The crown is that of Scotland,” he said. “And Scotland is William Wallace.”

“Yes,” Craig said, glancing at the elder Bruce, “that is another matter. For something else is required before all this can take lace. You and William Wallace must meet. And make peace.”

Robert was surprised. He looked to his father, who said, without lifting his cloudy eyes back at him, “Yes. At last I have seen that this is the way for both of you to have what you want.”

63

IN LANARK, WHERE IT ALL BEGAN, THE VILLAGERS PAUSED their baking and hammering and watched as three of Scotland’s elder nobles, among them Craig, rode past their cottages. In the village square, on the very spot Murron was killed, the nobles stopped, and Craig announced, “We seek an audience with Wallace!”

The elders paused, staring around at the villagers, who had adopted fixed expressions that tried to say, “We have no idea who Wallace is or why you look for him among us.”

Craig expected such a response. “We will wait beyond the village, at the edge of the loch!” Craig called out. “We will go to him however he wishes us to go!”

Craig and his comrades rode slowly past the silent villagers.

The half moon had risen into a clear, star-dazzled sky above the Scottish forest. In the hidden encampment where Wallace and a corps of his staunchest followers were planning the next raid, there was a commotion; the sentries had spotted the approach of a cluster of men and silently spread the alarm. Wallace and all the others were waiting with drawn swords as the nobles, their heads hooded, were led in on horseback by loyalists from the village. When Wallace stepped out from behind the trees, the nobles were stopped and their hoods pulled off. Nervously they glanced about them.

“Sir Craig. Out in the moonlight?” Wallace asked.

“Sir William. We come to seek a meeting,” Craig said.

“You’ve all sworn to Longshanks.”

“An oath to a liar is no oath at all. An oath to a patriot is a vow indeed. Every man of us is ready to swear loyalty to you,” Craig declared.

“So let the council swear publicly then.”

“We cannot,” Craig said. “Some scarcely believe you are alive. Others think you’ll pay them Mornay’s wages. We bid you to Edinburgh. Meet us at the city gates two days from now at sunset. Pledge us your pardon and we will unite behind you. Scotland will be one.”

Wallace glanced at Hamish and Stephen, who could barely hide their contempt. Wallace looked at the nobles. “One?” Wallace said. “You mean us and you?”

“I mean this,” Craig said and reached to his pocket.

The surrounding Highlanders, any one of whom would felt honored to stab a dagger through a blueblood’s heart, all lifted their blades. But what Craig withdrew was not a weapon; it was small, folded, limp. He extended it toward Wallace.

Then Wallace snatched it from Craig’s grasp. It was the handkerchief, clean and bright, still bearing Murron’s embroidered thistle, that Wallace lost at Falkirk in his encounter with the Bruce. Wallace stared at it, its soft folds bathed in the starlight, a relic he had thought gone forever, now returned to him from the unlikeliest source.

And he understood something else: the Bruce had found it, had saved it all this time. The significance of that, too, was not lost on Wallace.

When the Bruce had given Craig the handkerchief and told him to present it to Wallace as a sign of his sincerity, Craig had not understood what possible meaning such a simple object could have. But now he saw the effect on Wallace and said, “The Bruce will not be there. He begs you to come and join him as a brother to unite Scotland as one family.”

Wallace, Hamish, and Stephen retreated to the cave. Wallace had been silent since the nobles were rehooded and led away, and with every moment of Wallace’s silence, Hamish’s anger had grown. Finally, as Wallace stood at the mouth of the cave and stared up at the sky, Hamish could restrain himself no longer and blurted, “Why do you even pretend to wonder? You know it’s a trap!”

“Maybe,” Wallace said quietly. “Probably.”

“Then. . . Then . . .,” Hamish could only sputter. He looked to Stephen for help, but Irishman only shook his head.

“We can’t win alone, Hamish,” Wallace said. “We know that. Joining with the nobles is the only hope for our people.”

“I don’t want to be a martyr!” Hamish barked.

“Nor I! I want to live! I want a home and children and peace. I’ve asked God for those things. But He’s brought me this sword. And if He wills that I must lay it down to have what He wants for my country, then I’ll do that, too.”

“That’s just a dream, William!”

“We’ve lived a dream together. A dream of freedom!”

Hamish was shouting now. “Your dreams aren’t about freedom! They’re about Murron! You have to be a hero, because you think she sees you! Is that it?”

Wallace was quiet for a long moment. “My dreams of Murron are gone. I killed them myself. If I knew I could live with her on the other side of death, I’d welcome it.”

And that settled it. Hamish and Stephen saw that William was going to the meeting with the nobles, and nothing they could say or do could keep him from it.

64

WILLIAM, HAMISH, AND STEPHEN RODE TOWARD EDINburgh, talking little, not hurrying, knowing this could be their last ride. When they reached the top of the last hill, they stopped and looked down at the road leading into the city. Wallace handed his dagger to Stephen and unbuckled his broadsword and gave it to Hamish.

“No,” Hamish said. “Keep these. We’re going, too.”

“No. One of us is enough,” Wallace said.

“Nay. We decided it last night. We’re comin’ with you,” Stephen said.