Randall Wallace - Braveheart

“No. You’re going to live,” Hamish tried to tell him.

“I don’t think I can do without one of those,” old Campbell said, glancing down at where his hand was restraining some organ from sliding out of his wound, “whatever it is.”

Hamish was too grief stricken to speak.

William wanted to touch Campbell, even raised his hand, looking or a place to rest it, but every spot on the old man’s body seemed sore. Then William saw that old Campbell was looking a him with eyes that were steady and soft, the same way they had looked when old Campbell had brought him the new of the deaths of William’s father and brother. They looked at each other without speaking, then William said, “You…….were like my father.

Old Campbell rallied one more time and said, “And glad to die like him…. So you could be the men you are. All of ya.”

His last words were to Hamish. The old man let go of his guts and reached his bloody hand to his son. Hamish took it, and his father died in peace.

At sunset the next day, William Wallace, still bloody and in his battered armor, walked into the council chamber of Edinburgh Castle. Hamish and Stephen, the filth and gore of battle still upon them, strode in behind him and stood at his back as Wallace removed the chain of office from beneath his breastplate and laid it onto the table in front of Craig and the other nobles.

Wallace turned without a word and walked from the room. Hamish and Stephen lingered just long enough to see the satisfaction on the nobles’ face and followed William out. They moved out into the hallway after Wallace –but he was gone.

“William!” Hamish called out.

No answer; they moved to the great stone staircase.

“William!” Stephen called down.

But there was no answer. They headed downstairs. At the bottom of the staircase, they looked in both directions but saw no sigh of Wallace. Both men were troubled; there were men here who would have been happy to plunge a dagger into their friend’s back, and they meant to be watching it. Without a word, Stephen and Hamish split up and move off to search for him.

Several minutes later, Hamish moved into the stables, just as Stephen wandered in from the opposite side. A groom was there, currying the horses.

“Have you seen Wallace?” Hamish asked.

“Just now took his horse and left,” the groom told them

Hamish and Stephen moved to the door of the stables and looked out. A gray rain was falling in sheets.

Hamish and Stephen sat down on the wet hay and watched the rain. They watched for a long time. Then Hamish stood slowly and reached for his saddle.

“He’ll come back,” Stephen said. “Surely he will.”

“No. he won’t.”

“Where will you go?”

“Back to my farm till them come to hang me. You?”

Stephen shook his head. He had no idea.

Even when Hamish rode away, Stephen was still sitting at the door, staring out at the rain.

Wallace rode through the storm, the falling rain lashed his face and beat upon his hair, yet he did pull up a fold of his tartan to shield and warm his head but rode on like a man insane — or dead already.

He was going nowhere. He rode slowly. Sometimes the horse would stop when the drops of rain were stinging and they had moved beneath the cover of a tree. The horse would wait, expecting the rain would stop, but after awhile the waiting became tedious, and he would move on.

They moved through villages, passing common people taking shelter from the rain. They came to their doorways and looked out at the specter of this rider in battlefield dress, all tattered and marked from fighting, with wounds still seeping blood into their bandages.

Wallace looked at them. They started back, their faces showing no recognition. Did they know who he was? He gazed around them, the people for whom he fought. The seemed to find him disturbing, this battered man riding in the rain. Mothers pulled their curious children back from the doorways, and men watched him like guard dogs, ready to growl should he turn their way to ask for bread or a place by their fire.

He rode on.

He came to the place where he’d been going all along without knowing it; the grove of trees where Murron lay buried.

He dismounted then fell to his knees beside the secret grave. The rain fell on his face like tears. But he had no tears of his own. The cold, the icy rain, the wounds, nothing seemed to touch him. With his fingertips he carefully drew her embroidered cloth from beneath his leather battle shirt. Hanging in his trembling hands, filthy with grime and gore of battle, the handkerchief she had made for him looked impossibly white, something from a better, purer world.

Rain fell that day in London, too, and thunder rumbled through the sky, its dark roar penetrating even the thick walls of the palace and reaching its innermost rooms. Snug by a massive fire in its central audience chamber were Longshanks; his son, Edward; and the king’s closest advisors. On the far side of the room, away from the fire, the princess stood at the window and listened to the rain pounding against the wooden shutters.

She heard Hamilton telling the king, “Their nobles have sworn allegiance, m’lord. Every last one.”

Longshanks savored the victory — and gloated to his son. “Now we kill two birds at one stroke. We must eliminate Scotland’s capacity to make war against us, and we must renew our campaign for the French throne. So we recruit from Scotland for our armies in France.”

“The Scots will fight for us?” Edward sputtered.

“Surely you cannot believe they could be reliable –”

“What choice do they have? Now they must serve us or starve.”

But Edward hated the amused curl of his father’s lip and tone of his voice that seemed to dare his son to find any flaw in his logic. And Edward was afraid of his father no loner. Longshanks could beat him to death if he wished; that no longer mattered to Edward. And yet Edward knew his father would never do that — not because of love but pride. Edward would succeed him for better or worse; Longshanks would have no other son. If he should lose this one, there would be no more Plantagenets on the throne of England. Edward’s disregard for any physical threat from his father made him safe — but only bodily. Longshanks’s desire to crush what he saw as his son’s arrogance had only increased. And the prince was fighting back. “They fought for Wallace even when they were starving,” he said. “They died for him. They won’t fight for us.”

“No,” Longshanks said, shaking his gray mane like an angry lion. “You are wrong. They didn’t fight for Wallace. They fought for the idea that he would bring them victory. Now that idea has been destroyed. There is nothing unique about the Scots; they are like all people in their desire to align themselves with the strong and not with the weak. This idea, this dream, that Wallace was leading them to glory will make them even more likely than ever before to follow us, precisely because we are strong.”

“But if we have not caught Wallace –“ Edward began.

“He is gone!” Longshanks shouted. “Finished! Dead! If he as not yet bled to death or had this throat cut for him, he will not survive the winter! It is very cold — is it not, our flower?” He turned and smiled at the princess, standing far from the fire, at the cold draft of the window.

Everyone in the room was silent. Even Edward thought, The cruel bastard knows she thought Wallace was a better man than any she had met in London. He enjoys this, seeing he illusions shattered as well. And Edward himself, through he had never thought himself capable of feeling jealousy over any of Isabella’s affections, felt a sliver of satisfaction. When she had returned form her meeting with Wallace, she had glowed, and neither the king nor the prince had failed to notice it. When she had heard of Wallace’s defeat at Falkirk — Edward had taken the time to inform her of it personally — she had paled.