Braveheart (13 page)

Into a flat patch of ground, not far from the Calendonia trees where Murron and William had met for their secret nights together, they dug the hole for her body. A carver from the village had made her a stone marker bearing the name Murron McClannough. Beneath her name he had chiseled the outline of a thistle into the stone.

It was sleeting on the day they buried her, as if the tears of heaven had frozen on their way to the earth. Bagpipes wailed like banshees as Murron’s body, wrapped in burial canvas, was lowered into the earth under the gaze of her mother and father, her neighbors, and William Wallace. Her mother was crying loudly, her father wept in silence, and William knelt at the graveside, hiding within his closed fist the wedding cloth she had embroidered for him.

He stared at the chiseled thistle in unspeakable grief as the village priest sprinkled in dirt and holy water and the gravediggers filled the hole.

When others began to drift away, William stayed. When he looked up, he saw Murron’s father, old MacClannough, still there, broken in grief. The old man’s eyes stared at Wallace from across the grave of his daughter, then at last he, too, drifted away.

Alone, William reached into the tartan that wrapped his chest and withdrew the strip of cloth he had given her. He placed it above her heart and pressed it with his fingers deep into the dirt. Then he put the embroidered handkerchief inside his woolen wrap, next to his hart, stood slowly, and walked away.

23

IN THE ROYAL PALACE DOWN IN LONDON IT WAS A VERY different kind of day, sunny, even warm. Prince Edward was in his garden, playing a medieval version of croquet with his friend Peter. The princess, ignored by her husband but expected to be at all time attentive to his interests, sat watching. But Nicolette was at her side, and together they could talk, always being careful not to be so loud as to be a distraction or so quiet as to cause suspicion, for whenever they whispered, Edward seemed to think they were discussing him.

That morning Nicolette had juicy gossip she was eager to share. As Edward and Peter strolled and chatted down by the far wickets, Nicolette leaned closer to Isabella and said, “I’ve just heard the most romantic tale. It just happened up in Scotland. It is wrenching—a great tragedy!” She said this in the gravest French, and yet her dark eyes danced in dramatic delight as if she was relating the occurrences of a play. “Some village girl, exquisitely beautiful—and I say this because the man who told me the story remarked on how beautiful he had heard she was, and you know how men are, they never comment on beauty unless it is great—she was in her home village when she was attacked by a soldier. They say she attacked the soldier first, but even the English officials here do not believe that. They know she was being raped, they even admit that they encourage it. And—“

“How can you know that?” Isabella interrupted.

“I do know!” Nicolette insisted, pretending to be surprised and even offended that Isabella should question the accuracy of her gossip. “I know it to be true! I have my sources, they would not lie to me—for they know I would see through it.”

“Hmp! No English
official
, as you put it, would ever admit that rape was encouraged.”

You demonstrate how silly you are and how little you know about men or anything else that goes on in a royal court! Of course they would not admit such a thing to each other. Never ever to another man of any rank. But to me, under certain circumstances, they would tell everything they know. In fact it is almost impossible to keep them from telling everything they know, even when I would rather not know it!”

“Go on with the tale. You’re boring me with your boasting,” Isabella said, but she was far from bored by either the tale or Nicolette’s brags.

“Where was I? Oh, yes. The village girl. Exquisitely beautiful—did I say that? She was being attacked by an English soldier. And her lover, a Scottish tribesman—have you ever seen a Scottish tribesman?” Nicolette interrupted herself.

“No. Have you?”

“Well of course! There were some of them in France, mercenaries. I saw them when I was visiting my uncle in Normandy. They are big men with wild hair and calm eyes. My uncle pointed them out to me. He had given a band of them shelter when they had fled across the channel to avoid capture.”

“And they fought for money?”

“My uncle said they fought because they loved fighting. He only gave them money because he didn’t want them fighting for someone else.”

“Get back to your story, I beg you.”

“Ah yes. The girl. Exqui—“

“Exquisitely beautiful, I know! You said it already!”

“Exquisitely. And she was being raped when her lover happened along . . . But no, I don’t think he simply happened along, I think he must have been staying close to her, watching over her—don’t you think so? If she was so beautiful, and they were so in love, that is what he would have done. Yes, I’m sure of it. What do you think?”

“I think you are making up this whole story, and I am sure now that I am bored with it, for you are a bad poet.”

“Oh. So I am making it all up, is that what you think?”

“It is obvious. What happens, a man fights for a woman? How unusual, how remarkable! Oh, I forget, you said it was a tragedy. So they were both killed, I suppose, and lived happily ever after.” Isabella dismissed any other conclusion of the tale by taking an apple from the silver bowl beside her and biting off an unladylike mouthful.

“No,” Nicolette said haughtily. “In fact only one of them was killed.” She looked off across the flat green lawn and pretended to be entirely finished with the narrative, but she knew she had her friend hooked now.

“Which one?” the princess asked after a very short pause.

Nicolette spun back to her, delighted to spill out the rest. “The girl. She was killed—but not during the rape! The tribesman—I think in Scotland they call them clans, not tribes—he fought the soldiers, all of them, very many! Then he ran, thinking his lover had escaped by another direction. But she was captured by the sheriff. And the sheriff . . . perhaps he loved the girl himself, perhaps he was jealous, who will ever know? But he killed the girl.”

“No!” Isabella said, believing it all.

“Yes. Cut her throat in the town square. When her lover learned of this, he attacked the entire garrison. Rode in alone! Or they say alone, but then they say others came with him at some point, I don’t know, it all gets confusing here. Maybe the others came later. But what I know for sure—and this is the reason I know the story at all—is that news of this event has spread all over Scotland. It is like every Scot felt the girl’s pain and her lover’s rage. And her lover—his name is Wales-es or . . . no, it is Wallace—his name has spread with the news. Like fire across a field of parched grass. The English are sending up more troops to catch him and hang him. I have heard that the king may even send—“

And at that moment their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the king himself. Longshanks strode into the garden followed by advisors who could barely keep up with the gait of his long legs and marched straight through the price’s game, furiously kicking aside the balls and wickets. “You play games here?” Longshanks shouted at his son. “Scottish rebels have routed Lord Bottoms!”

Prince Edward glanced first to his friend as if to draw strength there, then lifted his chin in a show of calm. “I heard. This Wallace is a bandit, nothing more,” Edward said to his father.

Longshanks slapped his son, knocked him down among the colored balls and wickets. Isabella and Nicolette had already jumped to their feet at the arrival of the king, and now they both gasped. Even some of the advisors who had come with the king turned pale at this public abuse of the prince.

But Longshanks’s temper was something none of them had the least inclination to confront. The king was red faced, screaming. “You weak little coward! Stand up! Stand up!” Longshanks jerked his son to his feet. Peter, the prince’s friend, had flinched with the first blow and now tried to move to the prince’s side, but Edward lifted a white hand and warned him away.

Longshanks’s eyes were leaping from his head. “I go to France to press our rights there! I leave you here to handle this little rebellion, do you understand?
Do you?!”
He had grabbed his son by the throat. It must have happened before, for Edward seemed less frightened than angry. Although the veins popped out in his neck, he glared at his father with matching hatred.

“And turn yourself into a man,” Longshanks spat, and with that he shoved his son away, turned, and left as abruptly as he had come.

Now everyone left in the garden hurried to the prince’s side. Peter reached him first as did other of their male friends who had been watching the game from the opposite side of the garden. Isabella reached him, too, and, forgetting all pretense of royal calm, seized his hand in concern.

“Are you all right?” she asked, breathless. For the first time since coming to England, she felt something for her new husband, wanted to comfort him, hated the king for his sake.

Edward seemed startled by her presence beside him. Bright with humiliation, he shouted, “Get away from me!”

Isabella was confused. “I just . . . I was afraid you,” she stammered.

He slapped her. A quick sharp blow, smacking across her face. She staggered but recovered her balance. In that eternal instant just after the blow, when everything she had ever assumed about her future was changing forever, she felt her own pride stiffen and made a point of remaining standing and not falling down as her husband had. Nicolette jumped forward and seizer her arm; her other attendants rushed to her from their mats in the shade, but Isabella shook off Nicolette’s arm and raised a hand to her other attendants to show she need no assistance. Her left cheek burning red, her eyes icy, she curtsied slowly to her husband. “I only wished to be of help, my most noble lord,” Isabella said in a flat, low voice.

“I will settle the Scottish problem!” Edward snapped in the direction of his own retinue of young men, who seemed by their stiff postures to be wishing their clothes looked less festive and more military. “Go to Lord Pickering. Tell him to send the cavalry out to suppress these rebels. I want this Wallace found and hanged!”

The frightened aides scurried away. The prince, suddenly finding himself at a loss for what to do, followed after them with Peter by his side.

Now, at last, Isabella rose from her curtsy. With her first step she staggered, and Nicolette snatched her arm to steady her. “You’re dizzy!” Nicolette erupted and added a vile epithet in French.

“Shh!” Isabella said. “I am unhurt.”

They walked toward the door of the palace arm in arm. Under her breath so that none but Isabella could hear, Nicolette said, “I hope your husband goes after the Scotsman himself. This Wallace will kill him for certain”

24

A BIT NORTH OF ITS GEOGRAPHIC CENTER, BRITAIN IS pierced by two jagged slashes of water that dart inland, one from the east and the other from the west, cutting the island nearly in half. The bottleneck of land that remains is a beautiful rolling plain, broken here and there by sudden promontories that jut into the north Atlantic sky. This land is the doorway to Scotland, and Stirling Castle was its gatekeeper. Rising on the noblest of the promontories, its stony battlements gazed out for miles in all directions, daring all comers.

Safe within the walls of this castle sat Lord Pickering, head of the English army in Scotland. He was in the great room with his generals, discussing the deployment of their forces, when he received the royal messenger. Reading the note the prince had sent him, Pickering replied to the messenger, “Please report that I have already sent out the cavalry. And assure the prince that I shall catch Wallace one way or another.”

The messenger left as Pickering burned the message.

At the same time, at another castle not far away, Robert the Bruce lay in bed with a young Nordic beauty. She was drowsy; the lids hung heavily over her vacant blue eyes. But the lovemaking had not defused the restlessness of Robert’s spirit. He lay on his stomach, turned away from her on the bed. She stirred and kissed his neck, but he didn’t respond.

“I wanted to please you,” she said.

He seemed not to have heard her, then at last he muttered, “You did.” But he was numb as she nuzzled him again. She sagged back, and he still stared away, lost in thought.

But then he became aware of her and realized her feelings were hurt. He tired to explain what he’d been thinking. “In Lanark Village,” he said, “The king’s soldiers killed a girl. Her lover fought his way through the soldiers and killed the magistrate.”

The blond beauty he’d spent all night and most of the morning with just looked at him blankly.

“He rebelled. He
rebelled
!” Robert insisted. “He acted. He fought! Was it rage? Pride? Love? Whatever it as, he has more of it than I.”

The blue eyes only appeared vacant; Robert’s young lover understood exactly what he was saying. She turned away from him. “You might have lied,” she said toward her pillow.