Randall Wallace - Braveheart

“I understand you have recently been given the rank of knight,” the princess began.

“I have been given nothing. God makes men what they are.”

“Did God make you the sacker of peaceful cities? The executioner of the king’s nephew, my husband’s own cousin?”

“York was the staging point for every invasion of my country! And as for that cousin, I regret that he had but one head to lose. To try to repel us, he hanged a hundred Scots, even women and children, from the city walls.”

“That is not possible!” Isabella protested. But she knew Longshanks and knew his family, She glanced at Hamilton, the richly dressed royal crony that the king had sent with her as both advisor and informant, and Hamilton averted his eyes.

“Longshanks did far worse the last time he took a Scottish city!” Wallace said.

Wallace watched as Hamilton, his silver hair smoothly combed, his beard finely groomed in the style of the court, his white hands graceful and delicate, tilted himself toward the princess and said softly in Latin, “he is a murdering bandit. He lies.”

Wallace replied in Latin, “I am no bandit! And I do not lie!”

They were startled at Wallace’s fluency in the language of scholars. He saw this; it made him angrier still. “Or in French if you prefer!” he went on. “ Certainment, c’est vrai! Ask your king to his face, and see if his eyes can convince you of the truth!”

She stared for a long moment at Wallace’s eyes.

“Hamilton, leave us,” Isabella said.

“M’lady—” Hamilton began.

“Leave us now,” she ordered.

He reluctantly obeyed. He saw that she wanted the exchange to be private, and Wallace turned and nodded for his men to leave.

Stephen, who had been admiring the lady’s beauty nonstop, leaned in and whispered to William, “Her husband’s more of a queen than she is. Did you know that ?” Without waiting for an answer, Stephen moved off with Hamish and Campbell.

The princess gestured to her handmaiden, and Nicolette, eyebrows lifted high in surprise, floated past Wallace, glancing back to appraise the view of him from behind and darting one last look at Isabella before moving out to stand beside the French guards by the carriage.

Wallace and the princess were left alone.

She spoke quickly as if anxious to settle their business and end the meeting. “Let us talk plainly. You invade England. You have it within your power to cause great suffering and death. But you cannot complete the conquest, and I perceive you are clever enough to know that. Yes, you have been victorious close to your shelter and supply. But the deeper you go into England, the harder your task will be.”

Wallace broke in. “We will bear the hardships to make our country free. English rule ensures our deprivation.”

She forced herself on, anxious not to deviate from the approach she had planned for herself. “The king proposes that you withdraw your attack. In return he grants you hereditary title, estates, and this chest with a thousand pounds of gold, which I am to pay to you personally.”

“A lordship. And gold. That I should become Judas.”

“Peace is made in such way.”

“ Slaves are made in such ways!” The sudden passion of his outburst startled everyone:” the princess, those watching from outside the tent, and even, so it seemed, Wallace himself, for he turned away from her sharply and struggled to control the emotions that had leaped from him.

Isabella gripped the handles of her regal chair. Her eyes were wide as a doe’s and fixed on this man who stood before her in all his power and all his pain, and she understood exactly what had caused it all. She said something in a voice so soft that not even Hamilton, standing the closest to the tent opening and straining to hear, could make it out; the only one who heard was Wallace. What she said was, “I understand you have suffered. I know… about your woman.”

And Wallace said back to her, just as softly, “She was my wife. We married in secret because I would not share her with an English lord. They killed her to get to me.” He did not even turn his face to her, and get to me.” He did not even turn his face to her, and yet she was breathless in the certainty that everything he said was true. “I’ve never spoken of her,” he went on. “I don’t know why I tell you now. Except you remind me of her.”

He lifted his face now, and their eyes met.

“You resemble….” He began. “But not just in how you look. She was strong inside, like you are. She could have been a queen herself. In another world, a sweeter, kinder world, a world of justice, she would have been.” He tried to push the memories away, moving his hand as if they were physically beside him. He stared fully at the princess, and his voice took on an urgency, like pleading.

“Someday you will be a queen. So you must open your eyes,” William said. “When I was seven years old I saw thirty Scottish patriots hanged in a barn, lured there by Longshanks under a flag of truce. My father and brother stood up to that savagery and lost their lives. When I grew to be a man. I tried to live in peace. I fell in love with…” But he could not bring himself to speak her name.

But he wanted — needed — to tell this woman who reminded him so much of Murron just how and why he had lost her. “The soldiers of your kind decided they could take her, like everything else in Scotland. I fought them, but she was caught. To lure me to capture, the king’s magistrate cut her throat in the square of Lanark Village.”

He paused and drew in a long slow breath. Isabella watched him, her eyes burning, her arms aching to hold him. He looked at her, his eyes growing harder. “My fight is not with fortress cities. It’s with one man’s desire to rule another man. Tell you king that William Wallace will not be ruled. Nor will any Scot while I live.”

The princes rose slowly from her chair, moved in front of him, and lowered herself to her knees. Hamilton and her other attendants saw this from a distance and were shocked. But the Princess of Wales bowed herself before the heart of this commoner.

“Sir,” she said in a voice only Wallace could hear, “I leave this money as a gift. Not from the king but from myself. And not to you but to the orphans of your country.”

She lifted her face. Their eyes held a moment too long.

Wallace and his captains sat on horseback at the head of their company and watched as the princess’s procession left. Hamish studied Wallace’s face. Wallace noticed and gave him a noncommittal shrug. As the carriage rolled away, its window curtains lifted back slightly. All they saw were the princess’s fingers, but they knew she looked back.

Wallace reined his horse away and rode back to camp.

THE LIGHT OF THE MOON SLIPPED DOWN THROUGH THE clear night air, over the charred broken timbers of York, into the barren streets of the sacked city, and onto the shoulders of William Wallace.

He walked there alone.

The bodies of the dead had all been carted away and buried, a task organized by York’s monks and nuns. They had gone to the monastery and convent Wallace’s men had spared and had recruited helpers from outlying villages to come back to the city and give the men who had once defended it a Christian burial. At first he villagers had been too frightened to come; they were amazed even to find the monks and nuns alive, knowing that Longshanks, when he had sacked a Scottish city near the borders, had slaughtered everyone within it, including not only the women and children but the nuns themselves. The monks and nuns of York assured them that this had not been the case with their city and that Wallace had given them a promise to allow Christian burial of the dead. Still the villagers would not come, many of them believing the nuns and monks were but ghosts or false apparitions sent by the devil to deceive them. The churchmen returned to the villages with women and children who themselves had been spared, and finally the people came out and hauled away the dead for sanctified burial.