Randall Wallace - Braveheart

The civilians saw him, too. Their screams grew more frantic, they pounded on the gate with increased panic — and then suddenly they fled.

The captain appeared again beside the governor, and looking at those who had been shut out, running now to get as far away from the city as possible, he thought, Do they flee because they know we won’t let them in? Or is it because they no longer wish to be inside?

Watching the Scots come on like an endless black cloud building into a relentless storm, the governor turned to the captain and asked, “Find every Scottish civilian in the city — traders, craftsmen, and their families all of them — and bring them to me. I especially want the ones wearing the Scottish cloth. Fetch them all.

The captain did not understand the purpose of the order, but he did not challenge it, for he saw on the governor’s face a look worthy of his uncle, Longshanks the King.

The battering ram, thrust by two dozen of Wallace’s favorite Highlanders, picked up speed and slammed into the wooden gate of the city. With the collision, the battle was on. Flaming arrows sliced through the night; pots of boiling oil splashed down from the parapets onto the attackers who swarmed the gate.

The oil beat the first wave of Scots back, but Wallace rushed forward and grabbed the ram cart with his own hands. The attackers rallied to him and helped him slam the gate again and again. The arrows, stones, and oil from the parapets caught some men, but the ram was well designed and sheltered most. The gates, rising twenty feet high, cracked and then broke altogether, but behind it was an awful tangle of carts, broken sheds, impenetrable rubbish. Wallace grabbed a torch, threw it into the wooden tangle, and shouted, “Black! Wait for it to burn!”

Inside the city, the captain hurried into the tower room where the governor had taken refuge. “M’lord, they’ve breached the wall!”

“Then do as I ordered.”

Outside the walls, the Scots waited, biding their time as the barrier burned. Suddenly they looked up in horror, the English were throwing the bodies of hung Scots over the wall. Men, women, even children, dangling at the ends of nooses.

The Highlanders stared in mute shock. Wallace was frozen; for a moment he was a boy again, back in MacAndrews’s barn, staring up at hanged bodies he could scarcely believe were real.

His men charged forward.

“ Stop!” Wallace screamed. “ Not yet! Listen to me!” The clansmen heeded the only voice they would have obeyed at that moment. “They wish to frighten us! Or goad us into attacking too soon! But don’t look away! Look!"

The Scots looked at the hanging bodies.

“Behold the enemy we fight!” Wallace thundered. “We will be more merciful than they have been. We will spare women, children, and priests! For all others, no mercy!”

Wallace drew his broadsword. The burning debris inside the gate collapsed and left a tunnel through the fire. Wallace screamed and led the charge.

WITHIN THE TAPESTRIES WALLS OF HIS LONDON APARTMENTS, Price Edward and his friend Peter heard a contingent of horsemen clatter into the courtyard below. They looked out the window and saw the arrival of Longshanks. They leaned back into the room, and Edward began to pace nervously.

“It is not your fault! Stand up to him,” Peter urged.

Edward showed Peter the dagger he had concealed in his belt behind his back. “I will stand up to him and more.”

Longshanks banged the door open and staled in angrily, followed by two advisors. First he glared at Peter with obvious loathing, then turned his piercing stare to his own son. “What news of the north?” Longshanks said, his voice husky with anger.

“Nothing new, Majesty,” Edward answered. “We have sent riders to speed any word.” They had known for some time of the massacre at Stirling, but they had heard nothing for days from York. Edward had sent an angry message to his cousin, York’s governor, demanding to know why no intelligence had been coming down from the north. His cousin knew Longshanks was returning to London and would be furious. Edward suspected his cousin was intentionally trying to erode the prince’s relationship with the king even further.

“Our army wiped out at Stirling, and you have done nothing?!” Longshanks spat and, choking on his own bile, began to cough.

“I have ordered conscriptions. Through all of the autumn and winter we can raise a new army. And through that same winter we can starve the Scots. By next spring they will have hung this bandit Wallace themselves and will beg us to come rule over them!” Edward delivered this speech, rehearsed and revised with Peter’s great care, and glanced to his friend for his approval. Peter nodded subtly and glanced back to the Longshanks.

But before the kind could respond, a messenger rushed in, bowing as he entered. Seeing the king there, too, he hesitated, not knowing whether to hand the message he carried to the prince, who had dispatched him, or to the king himself. “Here, give it to me!” the prince ordered, feeling a growing sense of being in command.

The messenger handed the price the scroll he had brought. Edward unsealed it, read the message, and nearly lost his balance. He stared around the room blankly, as if he had forgotten where he was and who these people were who stood there with him.

“What is it?” Longshanks demanded.

“Wallace has sacked York.”

“Impossible,” Longshanks answered. He turned on the messenger. “How dare you bring a panicky lie!”

The messenger had also brought a basket. He approached the central table with great dread, placed the basket on it, and uncovered its contents. Prince Edward was closest; he peered in, then staggered back. Longshanks moved to the sack coldly, looked in, and withdrew the severed head of his nephew, York’s governor. Former governor.

Peter, seeing Edward falter, spoke up quickly. “Sire! They own nephew! What beast could do such a thing?!” he said.

The kind seemed not to have heard. He dropped the head back into the sack, unmoved. After a moment he said, “If he can sack York, he can invade lower England.”

“We would stop him!” Peter insisted.

“Edward, who is this who speaks to me as if I needed his advice?”

The prince looked up and drew himself into a defiant posture. “I have declared Peter my high counselor,” he announced to his father.

Longshanks nodded as if impressed. He moved to Peter and examined the gold chain of office that the young man wore about his neck. Then Longshanks seized Peter by the throat and the waistbelt and threw him out the window, the same one Edward and Peter had looked out, six stories above the courtyard. Peter screamed, but not until he was almost to the ground.

Edward rushed toward the window in horror. He looked out at the man he had loved, the only one he had ever fully trusted, broken and bloody on the paving stones far below. He stared for a long time. Then Edward drew himself back inside the room and turned toward his father in shock and hatred and only then remembered the dagger.

He drew it and went for his father.

He stabbed at Longshanks. The old king dodged back, shouting to the advisors who jumped forward to interfere, ” No, let him come!” The kind smiled at the attack, parrying with his left arm, letting it be cut. His eyes burned. “Your fight back at last!”

Then Longshanks unleashed his own hateful fury; he grappled with Edward, knocked the dagger away, hurled him to the floor, and began to kick his son. Again and again he kicked, exhausting his strength and his fury on the young man, broken in heart and in spirit.

Edward lay passive and bloody; Longshanks coughed up a bit of blood. He ignored it and his son’s wreckage and went back to the discussion as if this fight was normal business.