Randall Wallace - Braveheart

The troops scrambled from every doorway and out into the courtyard. At the same time, the man Bottoms had dispatched as messenger tugged a horse to the gate and nodded for the keepers to open it. As they pulled the windlasses to wind up the chains that lifted the gate, he mounted the horse. The moment the gate was high enough he spurred the animal, galloped outside—and rode squarely into a spear that impaled him.

Wallace and his Scots, hidden just outside the gate, came pouring through the gate before its keepers could react; they were knocked to the ground and the ambushers had control of the entrance. A whole band of them streamed through. The English soldiers were taken completely by surprise. Bottoms sat on his horse and gawked around in confusion as the troop he had thought of as so powerful suddenly broke up all around him. Many of his men still hadn’t taken their weapons from the grinders; they found themselves beaten to the earth, or they knelt there on their own in surrender. Bottoms tried to shout orders: “Stop them… Don’t let… Align…”

Scots dragged Lord Bottoms off his horse: One drove his spear at the lord’s heart when Wallace’s broadsword rang in and deflected the blow.

“On your way somewhere, m’lord?” Wallace asked. The Scots, with the fortress already theirs, laughed in victory.

“Murdering bloody bandit!” Lord Bottoms spat.

Wallace’s sword jumped and stopped a whisker from the lord’s eyeball. “My name is William Wallace. I am no bandit who hides his face. I am a free man of Scotland. We are all free men of Scotland!”

The Scots cheered, drunk with the new taste of victory.

“Find this man a horse,” William said.

Stewart, father of the abused bride, was sputtering. “This is the lord who took my daughter on her wedding night!” he said.

William looked evenly at Stewart. “Yes. And now he would have killed this whole country if we’d let him. Now give him a horse.”

A spearman extended the reins of the lord’s thoroughbred.

“Not this horse. That one.” Wallace pointed to a bony nag hitched next to a glue pot. Then he glared at Bottoms. “Today we will spare you and every man who has yielded. Go back to England. Tell them Scotland’s daughters and her sons are yours no more. Tell them… Scotland is free.” As the Scots cheered, Wallace threw Bottoms onto the nag’s back and slapped the horse’s rear. It shambled away, followed by a handful of survivors, as the Scots chanted… “Wal—lace, Wal—lace, Wal—lace!”

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.

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?”