Jack Whyte: Order in Chaos

“There were no others to direct it, Will. You were God’s anointed for the post, and the Falkirk defeat was not your doing. You should have stayed.”

“Shite! It was my doing, Jamie. Andrew Murray would never ha’e let what happened there take place. He would ha’e found a way to make it work. His death after Stirling Bridge was Scotland’s greatest loss, and mine. And what would I ha’e done had I stayed? Led another thousand men to death in some other slaughter? No, Jamie, no …”

He coughed, clearing his throat, and shifted his feet, pressing his shoulders back against the wall in search of comfort. “I could not do that, not after what I’d learned, watching those whoreson horsemen run away, fleeing the field and leaving us behind like beasts for the slaughter. Scotland’s pride! Faugh! That travesty at Falkirk taught me that Scotland will never be free ’til her own lords and magnates decide to turn themselves around … ’til they see that their own freedom, their personal honor—and few of them have any of that left, in the eyes of the folk—must be torn from England. As long as they sit on their arses arguing, giving more time and thought to the welfare of their lands in England than they do to matters at home, Scotland will be a wasteland, its folk slaughtered by the nobility on both sides while their magnates make bargains for their own enrichment.”

“Come, Will, it’s not that bleak. There are some among the nobility who show great loyalty to the realm.”

“Aye, but damn few and nowhere near enough; the others are loyal to themselves alone. I saw it clear, that day at Falkirk, and that’s when I knew I could stand no more. I washed my hands clean of the whole mess, like Pontius Pilate, and it turns out they hated me for it. And so now I am to die when the sun rises, and I ask myself … no, that’s not true, Jamie. I ask you … Was I mistaken in the path I chose?”

He stood up straight and rattled the chains on his arms, looking down at them before he raised his tormented eyes to me. “Did I wrong Scotland? God knows, I have committed sins aplenty in the eyes of men like you, and none of them have bothered me since I saw my duty clear ahead of me … But it would grieve me now to think I had been wrong for all these years or that I had shirked my duty in the end.” He paused, then lapsed from the churchly Latin back into Scots. “Ye’ve never lied to me, Jamie. Ye’ve confronted me, ye’ve shouted at me, and defied me, but ye hae never lied to me. So tell me now. Have I been wrong?”

I shook my head. “I cannot answer that, Will. Only God can. Tell me, are you afraid of what they will do to you?”

He raised his eyebrows. “The executioners, ye mean? Are ye daft? Of course I am. They’re gaun to kill me, Jamie, to gut me and cut me into bits, and I’m no’ like to enjoy any part o’ it.” He puffed a derisive sound through his nostrils. “God knows I’m no’ feared to die, though. There were times, right after Falkirk, when I would ha’e welcomed death, frae any quarter; and every day God sent, for years prior to that, I thought to die in one tulzie* or another. It’s no’ the dyin’ that worries me, it’s the manner o’ it, for I wouldna like to die badly, bawlin’ like a bairn that’s had his arse skelped. †Will you be there?”

I had to think about what me meant for a moment. “Will I be where? You mean among the crowd? No, God forbid. Suffice that I’m here now.”

“Would you come if I asked you to, Jamie? To be there as my witness? There’ll be naebody else.”

“To watch you die … That’s something I have no desire to see, Will.”

“Aye, but no just to see it … to bear witness to it afterwards … The manner o’ it. An’ forbye, your being there wad stop me frae girnin’ ‡an’ makin’ a fool o’ mysel’.”

It was easy to smile at that I found.

“I think there’s little chance o’ that, Will. No Guardian of Scotland was ever any man’s fool.”

“Aye, but I failed as Guardian. Will ye come, for me?” He waited, gazing at me soberly. “Will ye attend?”

I closed my eyes and thought about that, pressing two fingers against my nose, and then I lowered my hand and nodded. “I will, Sir William. I will be your witness, and I will honor your trust and be honored by it. Will you confess yourself now? Are you prepared for that?”

The slow nod of agreement that followed seemed to lift a weight from my soul.

“Aye, Father James, I will. I’m ready … both to talk to God and to meet Him.”

I listened to his confession then, a surprisingly short one considering all the crimes for which he had been charged, convicted, and condemned, and when he had finished and recited the penance I set him, we talked for several more hours before they came to take him, and even then I was able to intercede for him by pointing out to Abbot Antony that Wallace had not even been allowed the basic decencies of hygiene.

Outraged, Antony insisted that the prisoner be washed before being taken out to meet his God … It was not much of a wash, God knows, but at least it cleansed him of the stink of his own wastes and allowed him to walk with his head held high.

Before he left the cell, he looked at me and nodded his head in silent acknowledgment and gratitude, and then marched off between his two jailers. He never addressed a word to Antony or to any of his guards. He simply walked away, his shoulders squared and, I sincerely prayed, his mind at rest. He was thirty-five years old, two years my senior. I remember, because that day was my thirty-third birthday and almost as many have gone by again since then.

And so I stood in Smithfield Square and bore silent witness to the death of the man who I believe to have been Scotland’s greatest and most loyal son, and I did it at his own request and for his own reasons. It was not a task I enjoyed, but it permitted me, perhaps, to mourn him more adequately than others should have. And afterwards, for many years, life continued, although in a Scotland that changed rapidly. Young Robert Bruce, the Earl of Carrick, seized the throne the following year, in 1306, and over the course of the two decades that followed, he finally ousted the English from Scottish soil and changed everything about the way the realm was run, building a single, unified country out of a feudal chaos. He it was who brought our land the unity, peace, and prosperity of which my cousin William had dared to dream.

But it was not until recently, when these new rumors of “The Wallace’s” heroic and defiant death began to circulate, that I recalled Will’s insistence that I serve as his witness and speak out thereafter on his behalf. It had not entered his mind that he might be lionized; he was concerned about being defamed and demeaned in death. And now the opposite is happening, and that strikes me as being even more ominous than his dying fears. He is being recreated, and falsely, by people seeking to use his greatness for their own personal ends. And greatness was Will’s gift, for all his faults and flaws. And so having listened to what is being said today by these faceless and once faithless folk, I see that the time has come for me to speak of the William Wallace I knew, for the man these empty rumors would recreate in his place is painted in false and garish colors, portraying a Hero of the Ancients, without sin, without flaw, without remorse, and worst of all, without the complex and perplexing humanity that made Sir William Wallace who he was.

*chiel—child; fellow

†bairns—children

*cowpin’—falling, tumbling

*lintie—a linnet (songbird)

*tulzie—scrap, tussle, skirmish

†skelped—slapped

‡girnin’—grimacing, weeping

PENGUIN CANADA