Randall Wallace - Braveheart

The magistrate watched coldly. Even when the most experienced of the executioners gave him a look that said they were about to go too far, the magistrate prolonged the moment, then he nodded and the executioner cut the rope.

Wallace fell upon his face on the platform. The crowd cheered—not in support of him but in excitement. The sight was seductive, the lust for blood infectious. They hushed again as the magistrate leaned to Wallace and said, “Pleasant, yes? Rise to your knees, kiss the royal emblem on my cloak, and you will feel no more.”

With great effort, Wallace rose to his knees.

The magistrate assumed a formal posture and offered the cloak.

Wallace struggled all the way to his feet.

“Very well then. Rack him.”

The executioners slammed Wallace onto his back on the table, spread his arms and legs, and tied each to a crank. Goaded by the crowd, they pulled the ropes taut. The crowd grew quiet enough to hear the groaning of Wallace’s limbs. Hamish and Stephen felt it in their own bodies.

Wallace wanted to scream, to try to blot out the agony that screamed through his body, but he would not let the sound go. The magistrate watched his struggle and smiled. “Wonderful, isn’t it, that a man remains conscious through such pain. Enough?”

Wallace shook his head. The executioners drew hot irons from a fire box and pressed them to his bare body. The sound of sizzling cut through the air with the smell of the burning flesh. Some of those in the crowd groaned themselves and looked away. But still no cry escaped Wallace’s lips.

Now the magistrate spoke only to him. “Do you really want this to go on? Are you sure?” And when the prisoner said nothing, the magistrate nodded to the executioners, who lifted the terrible instruments of dissection.

The disembowelment began. The magistrate leaned in beside Wallace’s ear. “It can all end. Right now! Bliss. Peace. Just say it. Cry out. Mercy! Yes?… Yes?”

The crowd could not hear the magistrate, but they knew the procedure, and they, too, goaded Wallace, chanting, “Mer—cy! Mer—cy!”

Wallace’s eyes rolled to the magistrate, who signaled for quiet and shouted, “The prisoner wishes to say a word!”

There was silence.

Hamish and Stephen were weeping as each in his own way prayed: “Mercy, William… Say ‘mercy’… ”

Wallace’s eyes fluttered and cleared. He fought through the pain, struggled for one last deep breath, and screamed, “FREEEEE—DOMMMMMM!”

The shout rang through the town. Hamish, Stephen, everyone, on the square, heard it. The princess heard it at her open window. Longshanks and his son seemed to hear. The cry echoed as if the wind could carry it through the ends of Scotland; and Robert the Bruce, on the walls of his castle, looked up sharply as if he too had heard.

The crowd at Smithfield had never seen courage like this; even English strangers began to weep. The magistrate, angry and defeated, gave a signal.

The executioner lifted his huge ax—and Wallace looked toward the crowd.

He saw Hamish and Stephen, their eyes brimming and their faces glowing. He saw that he had won, and it was over.

The ax began to drop.

And in the last half moment of his life, when he had already stepped into the world beyond this one, he glimpsed someone standing at Hamish’s shoulder. She was beautiful, smiling, serene.

She was Murron.

AFTER THE BEHEADING, WILLIAM WALLACE’S BODY WAS torn to pieces. His head was set on London Bridge, where passersby were invited to jeer at the man who had caused so much fear in England. His arms and legs were sent to the four corners of Britain as warning.

It did not have the effect that Longshanks planned. The story of William Wallace’s torturous death and the courage with which he faced it kindled a fire in the bellies of the Scots, a blaze that could not be extinguished. They rallied behind the only man who seemed capable of leading them: Robert the Bruce.

Some Scots suspected him of involvement in Wallace’s betrayal. Others found such suspicions unthinkable. All knew that Bruce was not Wallace, but he was the one, the only one, to whom they could look for leadership, for the other nobles, one by one, vacated their claims to the Scottish throne and announced their allegiance to the Bruce.

He accepted the remnants of the shattered Scottish army and declared that he would come to terms with England. And on a designated day, at the head of a ragtag army, he rode out to meet the English generals who had brought their army out onto the same field to witness and enforce the ceremony of submission from Scotland’s new king.

Hamish, Stephen, and others who had fought alongside William Wallace were among those in Bruce’s army that day. Also with the Bruce were the noblemen who had agreed to pay homage with him to Longshanks and to accept his endorsement of the Bruce’s crown.

To the English generals, who sat upon their fine horses at the head of their polished army and looked across at the shattered remnants of William Wallace’s forces, the ceremony hardly seemed worth the wait. The Scots looked ragged and defeated. Even the Bruce did, sitting slouched in his saddle. The English commander turned to the general beside him and said, “I should have washed my ass this morning. It’s never been kissed by a king before.”

Upon on the hill, Robert the Bruce looked down at the English generals, at their banners, their fine army.

He looked back at the ranks of his own. He saw Hamish. Stephen. Old MacClannough—though he did not know him. He looked at the faces there in the line.

Craig, among the other Scottish nobles mounted beside the Bruce, grew impatient. “Come,” he said, “let’s get it over with.”

But the Bruce held something. Uncurling his fist, he looked at the thistle handkerchief that belonged to William Wallace.

The other nobles reined their horses and started toward the English, but Robert looked up from the handkerchief to Hamish and Stephen, who had brought it to him, and were looking at him from the Scottish line even now, their eyes pleading for him to do what Wallace would have done.

“Stop,” Robert said.

He tucked the handkerchief safely behind his breastplate and turned to the Highlanders who lined the hilltop with him. He took a long deep breath and shouted, “You have bled with Wallace!” He slid his broadsword from its scabbard. “Now bled with me!”

A cry rose from the Highlanders as from a tomb: “Wal-lace! Wal-lace! Wal-lace!” Louder, louder… “Wal-lace! WAL-LACE!”

The chant built to a frenzy; it shook the ground. The Scottish nobles could scarcely believe it; the English were shocked even more.

And Robert the Bruce, king of Scotland, spurred his horse into full gallop toward the English, and the Highlanders hurled their bodies down the hill, ready to run through hell itself…

In the year of our Lord 1314, patriots of Scotland, starving and outnumbered, charged the fields of Bannockburn. They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen. And won their freedom.

Edward the Longshanks died not long after the execution of William Wallace. He was buried as an exalted king within Westminster Abbey; he lies within a marble tomb behind iron gates to the left of the chancel.

Edward II had a brief and sad reign. He was blamed by noble and commoner alike for the loss of Scotland and for other reverses of the kingdom’s fortunes. His wife opposed him in open rebellion; she escaped to France, recruited an army there in her homeland, and returned to England where she deposed her husband and had her son crowned in his stead. Edward II was privately executed by a method of torture that is unspeakable; his screams of agony, it is said, were heard for miles.