Randall Wallace - Braveheart

But William was gripping Murron. “Are you all right?”

“Go, William! Get away!” she pleaded.

Two new soldiers fell on William. Murron plunged her thumb into the eye of one and raked her fingernails across the face of the other; William spun and crushed their heads together like pecans and grabbed at the loose traces of the horse that pulled the flower cart. “Take the horse!” he said.

“You take it!”

“They’ll chase me! Then you take the horse! I’ll meet you at the grove!” He darted off through the crowd as Hesselrig, the magistrate, and more of his garrison arrived. They seemed to swarm in from every direction, dozens of them! None stopped to ask what had happened, they instinctively gave chase to the blood-splattered Scot who ran the instant they appeared. William weaved through the narrow streets of the village, knocking over baskets, jumping carts, scrambling over low rooftops as the soldiers stumbled after him, and the townspeople blocked their way.

Murron saw that all the soldiers had gone after William; she was clear! She darted toward the cart horse, but someone grabbed her leg. It was the soldier with the bloody mouth, whose tongue she had bitten off, whose arm William had broken. With his good hand, he had gotten her ankle in a death grip.

She couldn’t get free. She stumbled and tried to kick him, and still he held on with his one hand. Grotesquely, through his mangled mouth, he shouted at the others. “Stop this one! She’s with him!”

Two soldiers heard him and started back. Frantically, Murron stomped her free foot against the soldier’s face and finally broke free. She jumped on the horse, kicked its flanks, and the horse ran.

William, hopping from roof to roof across the narrow streets of the village, saw her escaping. He slipped down into an empty alley, scrambled low across a deserted stall, and ran for the brush of the river.

Murron galloped the horse down the narrow twisting lanes. Free! But the town wasn’t made for a steeplechase. As she looked back to be sure William had made it, the low hanging sign of a tavern caught her and raked her off the horse.

William reached the edge of the town and slipped into the trees by the river; the magistrate and his soldiers were running every which way, but they had lost him. Smiling at the thought that Murron had made it, too, William headed deeper into the trees.

At that moment Murron’s head was clearing; she was in one piece, nothing broken! She started to get up, but the soldiers’ pikes appeared over her, and then the face of Hesselrig came into view. It was red with too much exertion after too much drink. He was furious, and he was leering. “So this is the little whore he was fighting for,” he said.

At the grove above the precipice, William moved into the shelter of the trees, expecting to see Murron. She was not there. He spoke her name softly, thinking she must be hiding: “Murron…” He listened and heard only the rustling of the wind through the treetops.

“Murron!” he yelled.

Nothing except the wind.

INSIDE THE ROYAL MAGISTRATE’S HEADQUARTERS, MURron was tied in a seated position on the floor, an oak staff behind her elbows, her mouth stuffed with burlap and bound with cord. Soldiers stood at the doors and windows; Hesselrig stood over her. Her eyes were frightened, and yet they were defiant. How can she look at me that way? the magistrate wondered. Just a girl… Doesn’t she fear us at all? He thought about what she was seeing. He was himself an English soldier, promoted through the ranks to become an officer; he had led men in battle, the scars that marked his face and hands testified that he had spilled much blood—his own, and that of many enemies—on his way to what he wanted. Don’t I look serious? He asked himself. Don’t I frighten her?

His corporal entered. “Nothing,” the corporal said, shaking his head.

From outside they heard drunken shouting. “English! English!” They looked outside and saw the village drunk weaving in the shadows, calling out to them. “Not so strong, huh? One Scot buggers six of you!”

One of the English soldiers standing guard outside threw a stone all the drunk; it clattered across the paving stones of the square, and the drunk chuckled and stagger off into the darkness.

The soldiers inside were edgy. One of them grabbed Murron by the hair and jerked her head back. “I’ll show you what an Englishman can do—”

“ Leave her! I want her unmarked,” Hesselrig ordered.

The corporal moved closer to him and spoke in a low voice. “Our informants tell us his name is William Wallace. Has a farm out in the valley. I say we burn it.”

“Not his farm. I want him,” Hesselrig said.

“But how, if we can’t find him?” the corporal wondered. None of Hesselrig’s other subordinates would have pressed him this way, but the magistrate and his second-in-command were veterans in this ugly business of suppression. “You know how these people are. Once he’s into the hill country, we can look for our whole lives and never find a trace of him.”

But Hesselrig, his attention wandering back to Murron, had noticed something peeking out at the top edge of her dress. He reached down to her, slid his finger to the bare skin below her throat, and fished out the strip of tartan tied around her neck and concealed beneath her smock. She squirmed as if to bite or kick him, but trussed up as she was, she could move but little.

Hesselrig united the strip of cloth and held it up, so the corporal could see it better. “These Highlanders, they weave this cloth into special patterns. They give them as…” And then it hit him. He looked down at Murron with a smile of pleasant surprise. “You’re married! Aren’t you, girl.”

Hesselrig looked from Murron to the cloth to Murron to the corporal. “We make him come to us,” Hesselrig said.

At the head of his entire garrison. Hesselrig led Murron, her arms still bound behind her, into the village square. His soldiers tied her to one of the posts of the central well that served the whole village. The townspeople didn’t want to be near the soldiers, but they hung on the fringes of the square, too curious to pull away.

Hesselrig looked all around at them and shouted to the people. “An assault on the king’s soldiers is the same as assaulting the king!” he shouted.

He looked down at Murron, her mouth bound, her eyes defiant.

“So under the authority of my king—and yours—I exercise his rightful power!”

He pulled his dagger from his belt, and as calmly as a man might sign his name in a letter to a stranger, he drew the blade across Murron’s throat.

Her eyes sprang open like a doe’s; she tried to cough. Blood wept from the gash across her throat. In but a moment, she sagged dead.

The townspeople were struck dumb. Even some of the soldiers gaped in mute horror.

Hesselrig turned calmly to his men. “Now,” he said. “Let this scrapper come to me.”

William slid through the shadows and reached the barn at the Campbell farm. He slipped inside, and there he found a half-dozen men, gathered in the narrow light of a shielded lantern; among them were Campbell and Hamish, who spotted William first, and cried out, “William!”

William moved into the light; he was scratched and bruised, worn from running, sick with worry. And the sight of these men gathered there did nothing to soothe his fears. “Have you seen Murron?” he asked them. His friends stared at him mutely. “She got away! I saw her! I saw her!” William insisted. When still they said nothing, he turned to dash out the door again, but Hamish was ready for that, and he and another stout fellow gripped William’s arms, as old Campbell closed in and laid a hand on his shoulder.