Randall Wallace - Braveheart

Old Craig shook his head. “No one knows.”

“Who does he think he is, with this order that we come?” Mornay muttered to the Bruce. “He invades England without our instructions. He writes the king of France; he writes the pope! What is he trying to do?”

“I can’t say for sure,” the Bruce answered his friend, “but I can tell you what he’s done already. Look around you. Instead of whispering about each other, now we’re all whispering about him.” Both Mornay and Craig looked around and saw that what the Bruce said was true. “Maybe his most remarkable achievement is that he has brought us together.”

Wallace appeared, marching up in long, powerful strides. All the nobles and been declaring to each other the questions they meant to ask him, the explanations they meant to demand, but when they saw the look on Wallace’s face, they said nothing. Hamish, old Campbell, and Stephen moved along quickly behind Wallace; when he stopped and faced the noblemen, the two big Scots took positions on his left and right, like lions guarding the gates of a mythical city, while Stephen wandered silently in and out among the crowd. As deterrents to physical attack, both were amazingly effective: anyone wild enough to think of assaulting Wallace hand to hand would be sobered by the sight of the massive men at his shoulders; and yet Stephen was perhaps even more unsettling, weaving among the nobles with that saintly smile of his lips and devilish fire in his eyes and making their backs crawl and itch whenever he was behind them.

Wallace said nothing at first, just looked off toward the tree more than fifty paces away, where Highlanders were setting up a Scottish spearman’s shield against a bale of hay. They tucked a melon behind the shield. Then Wallace uncovered the crossbow he had brought, wrapped in the skins, and held it up for all of them to see. The nobles gazed at the strange new weapon of war, looking so scientific, with its short, powerful bow fixed rigidly on its side at right angles to it’s stock, completed with a trigger mechanism and a crank for drawing back the thick, strong string. They watched in stony silence as Wallace cranked the crossbow to its full cocked position, placed a bolt in its slot and fired at the armor.

The bolt slashed through the air and punched right through the armor and the melon, leaving no doubt what it would do to a man’s heart.

Old Craig turned pale. “That is why the pope outlawed the weapon! It makes war too terrible!” the old nobleman said. He wondered if this weapon, specifically forbidden by the Vatican for use in warfare was the subject if Wallace’s letter to the pope.

Wallace ignored Craig and said simply, “Longshanks ordered these from Holland. His factories are making them, too.”

“How many will he have?” Mornay asked.

“We recon over a thousand,” William answered.

“And this is not all. He is bringing his army over from France to reinforce the new army he has mustered from England. In addition, he will force Welsh bowmen into service and possibly Irish conscripts as well.”

“How do you know this?” Craig asked in amazement.

Again Wallace ignored him. “I brought you all here so you could see what is facing us. This weapon will be used against us. It will shoot through our schiltrons with great accuracy. Longshanks will not respect the pope’s bans, not if he can use the weapon to destroy the strategy that wrecked his army at Stirling.”

“It is useless to resist him!” Craig sputtered.

Wallace erupted. “No! Not useless! We can beat this! With cavalry — light, fast horsemen, like you nobles employ — we could maneuver their bowmen. Look a the weapon!” Wallace said, holding the crossbow up, shaking it at them. “Yes, it is accurate and powerful, but it is heavy and clumsy, too. It is one thing to fire it coldly at a target, but it’s something again to try to shoot it when you are being charged head on by Highlander on foot and by horsemen from you flanks and rear, all screaming like berserkers!”

“You wish us to be insane?” Mornay asked.

“I wish you to be Scotsmen,” Wallace said.

There was a long silence. Wallace looked at Robert the Bruce, who did not avert his gaze but still did not speak up. At last old Craig said, “With such a weapon and such a force arrayed against us, perhaps it is time to discuss other options.”

“Other options?” Wallace asked. “Don’t you wish at lease to bring your men to the field, so you can barter a better deal from Longshanks before cover and run?”

“Sir William!” the Bruce said, trying to deflect the storm.

“We cannot defeat the power arrayed against us!”

Craig insisted through his anger.

“We can and we will!”

“ Sir William!” the Bruce said with even greater vehemence.

But the storm of Wallace’s anger had already begun. He shouted at Craig, at all of them. “We won at Stirling and still you quibbled! We won at York and you would not support us! If you will not stand with us now, then I say you are cowards! And if you are Scotsmen, I am ashamed to call myself one!” With that the tossed the crossbow onto the ground at their feet, like a gauntlet, daring them.

The nobles, all of them carrying swords and daggers, gripped the handles of their weapons. Hamish and his father stepped up shoulder to shoulder with Wallace, while Stephen’s dagger silently from his belt and snuggled against the throat of the noble nearest him.

Robert the Bruce, backed by Mornay, jumped between Wallace and the nobles. “Stop! Everyone stop! Please, sir William! Speak with me alone! I beg you!”

Robert was the one man capable of drawing Wallace away from the confrontation; he was the only noble Wallace had any desire to listen to. They moved a dozen paces in the direction of the shield impaled by the crossbow bold. Stephen showed away the man he had seized, ad he moved to join the Campbells in glowering at the nobles and begging, any and all, to step forward and fight.

When the Bruce had urged Wallace far enough away that they could speak in confidence, he turned and spoke in a suppressed but passionate voice. “Sir William, please listen to me! You have achieved more than anyone dreamed. You’ve made all of Scotland and all of England as well stand and wonder at what you’ve done! But fighting these odds now” — he gestured at the shield pierced by the bolt - “this looks like rage, not courage. Peace offers its rewards! Has war become a habit you cannot break?”

The question struck deep in Wallace. For a moment his eyes flickered away toward the juncture of the green hills with the gray sky, as if everyone he had loved and lost had just moved beyond that horizon. But when he looked back to Bruce, his eyes were not dreamy but blazing with life. “War finds me willing,” Wallace said. “I know it won’t bring back all I have lost. But it can bring what none of us have ever had: a country of our own. For that we need a king. We need you.”

It was Bruce’s turn to pause and swallow. “I am trying,” he said.

“Then you tell me what a king is! Is he a man who believes only what others believe? Is he one who calculates the numbers for and against him but never weighs the strength in his own heart? There is strength in you. I see it. I know it.”

Robert the Bruce was both moved and ashamed to hear these words from William Wallace. Seeing this, Wallace pressed him further.

“These men are like all the others, they need a leader!” Wallace said. “They will never accept me, but they will you! Lead them! Lead us all.”

Robert stared at Wallace. Wide-eyed, breathless, the young nobleman seemed unable to move. Finally he said, “I must…consult with my father.”

“And I will consult with mine.”