Braveheart (29 page)

“
In a little while,” she said. “We’ll visit at dinner if you can find the time to dine with me.”

“
We’ll dine together every night. We’ll make a month of banquets!” But then the cloud of reality passed over his face. “That is, if you r visit is official, and we can behave with the open hospitality of diplomacy. If it unofficial, you are just as welcome.”

He did not add that too much formal attention paid to her, though she was his own daughter, could be a political embarrassment for them both. Obviously she knew that, to have come so quickly and quietly. The soldiers of France and England were battling each other, but both kings maintained the public pretense of keeping the conflict at arm’s length, blaming belligerent nobles with unruly private armies for eth clashes that took place in the constant struggle for territory and power. This was a kind of royal insurgence; the kings could negotiate without loss of face or capitulate without the actual loss of one or the other’s head.

“
My visit is official,” Isabella said. “But it is not do be public.”

“
Then come,” Philip said, leading her to the great table. “Come and sit down.” They settled into the deep chairs, Philip at the head of the huge expanse of polished plank, and Isabella at his right hand. He poured her wine from the flask in front of him. She nodded her thanks but did not drink.

“
I have been sent,” she said. “We have heard in London that you have a … certain visitor.”

He was pouring a drink of wine for himself; he stopped before his cup was full and set the flask down.

“
I do, yes. William Wallace.”

“
You appear irritable.”

“
No, it is not at you. I am unsettled that new travels so fast, especially to a court where I am – an adversary.”

“
My father-in-law has many ears listening for work of this man who visits you. Is he…comfortable?”

“
I believe so, yes. His room has blankets and a bed…”

“
And bars?”

“
Yes.”

“
Then it is also true that he killed Bouchard?”

“
It is true.”

“
Bouchard was a pompous, cruel, evil ass.”

“
Did you come to tell me what I already know?”

“
Let us see if I can indeed tell you what you already know,” Isabella said. She paused to lick her lips, and Philip noticed that something about all this was making her nervous. Not his royal audience; she was his daughter, and would soon be a queen herself. And not his mission she’d been sent on; clearly she had already thought out what she wished to say. But something was making her mouth dry.

She said, “You have in custody a man of singular circumstance. He is not a kink, yet he is everything to his country. But he had fled that country and has come to you because your enemy is his enemy. He is alone and abandoned, but you, because you have met him, know that his strength does not depend on the number of those around him.”

“
You have met him, too,” Philip broke in. “We heard rumors of your being sent to bribe him, but I wasn’t sure it was true until now.”

“
I met him,” she said, going on quickly. “I brought him the king’s offer of wealth and titles, and he refused it all. Now he has come to you. It is obvious that he came of his own free will, for it is unlikely you could have sought him out yourself, in that the full power of the English throne was never able to root him out, even in Britain itself with huge sums of money offered as reward for his capture.”

“
You are doing well so far, do go on.”

“
I am no judge of military tactics, but anyone can judge the results of his leadership, achieving victories no one else thought possible. Apart fro his ability to inspire his followers, Wallace is indisputably a brilliant military strategist. He lost at Falkirk because he was betrayed. You know this. It is why you wished to use him. You did wish to use him, did you not?”

The king nodded, smiling at the keenness of her mind.

“
You did. This caused Bouchard to be jealous. I know nothing of the fight itself, only that Bouchard was killed. But knowing Bouchard….. As well as Wallace,” She added almost reluctantly, “it is clear that Bouchard was the aggressor. Is this correct?”

“
Bouchard force the fight—if you could call it that. He drew a dagger and threatened Wallace with it. Wallace ignored the dagger – as if he knew Bouchard lacked the will to use it. Or perhaps it was because Wallace cared nothing if he died. Whichever it was he reached up, snatched Bouchard by the hair, and snapped his neck with a single jerk. There were many witnesses in the tavern and all of them gave the same account.”

“
Exactly so,” said the princess, who seemed to the king to have flushed when he confirmed the Scotsman’s innocence. “But still you have a problem. Bouchard was a relative. Even if most of our aristocrats despised him, even if his own family hated him, he was still a royal relative. For you to release the man who killed him – a foreigner, no less – would infuriate many of those who support you in your fragile alliance against Longshanks. But you will not execute Wallace, for you will not have the blood of an innocent man upon your soul. It vexes you even to have him in prison, but you can find no other alternative. Of course you could send him to Longshanks and even receive compensation for doing so.”

“
You have been sent to convince me to do just that.”

“
Yes,” Isabella said. “Exactly. Of course, no Frenchman could stand to see his kink lick the hand of Longshanks. And yet Longshanks believes you will do just that if he sweetens that hand with gold. No wonder the French and the English do not get along.”

Philip wanted to ask her to say more on that subject; she could not be happy in her adopted home. But he knew she would reveal nothing voluntarily, so instead he asked her, “Do you have a suggestion for me on how I might escape this dilemma?”

“
Send him to the pope.”

Philip was struck dumb by the genius of the idea. His mouth silently echoed the words”
The pope.
The one judge on all the earth to whom he could send Wallace without offending anyone. He would even be doing Wallace a favor, for the Scotsman had told him, when they had talked in the garden, that only two monarchs could help Scotland now, and they were the king of France and the holy father of Rome. Philip, with enormous influence in Rome, could give Wallace the letters necessary to obtain a papal audience, and Wallace would certainly take the oath that he would go.

Philip looked at Isabella and smile. “I hope we are always friends,” he said. “I would hate to be your enemy.”

“
We will always be friends,” she said. She found herself wanting to lean to her father and embrace him warmly, not with the studied formality she had been trained to observe but with real feeling. She had never taken such a physical liberty with him. If she had had such an impulse in the days before she had left France, she would have obeyed the urge. But living in the English court had taught her restraint.

“
You’ve just done me a great favor, Isabella,” the king said, perhaps feeling the same regret that she had. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“
I think there is nothing else that can be done for me,” she said.

“
Would you care to see the man you have just helped me free from prison? After all, he’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

Everything in Isabella wanted to say yes.
Bring him here, let me go to him. Yes. Yes!

“
He is barely more than a stranger to me,” she said at last. “I am here at the service of justice, nothing more.”

The next day she stood on a tower walkway and watched as a contingent of four guards, with a cloaked figure riding between the, journeyed off toward Rome. They had begun some distance from the French royal palace, since the dungeon where Wallace was imprisoned was not on the castle grounds, but she saw them as they topped a low hill, and she knew the cloaked figure was William Wallace.

She said a prayer for him, that God would protect him with all His saints and angels. She prayed He would bless the visit with the pope.

And after she said amen, she cursed herself for not taking the chance to see him one more time.

53

BECAUSE HE WAS ACCOMPANIED BY REPRESENTATIVES OF THE KING OF FRANCE, William Wallace was admitted to the Vatican. He was informed, in Latin, the universal language, he would be granted an audience with the pope – that very day. He was provided clear clothes -- though the ones he had been given at the start of his journey were new – and was allowed to wash and make himself presentable for his holiness, who would be seeing him in less than an hour.

Wallace asked for a place to pray.

He was shown a tiny chapel that seemed to have excavated from the stone walls. It was lit with many candles below a carving of Jesus on the cross. There was barely room to kneel. It was perfect.

There William Wallace prayed. It was a prayer without words; he had no words for what he felt. What a journey it had been that had brought him to this place. From a Scottish valley to a great city and already more that a thousand years old! That morning he and his escorts had passed the ruins of a colosseum where Christians had fought lions for the amusement of Kings. He had fought kings for –for what? For the please of God? To try to burn away his grief? For revenge? Or because he had no choice?

On his knees in that chapel, he prayed with his soul. He let his thoughts float away and tired to place his heart before the throne of God. He did not expect to know God’s will. Uncle Argyle had taught him the Old Testament Belief in the fear of God: that the Almighty was a mystery, but His revelations were all round us.

To William Wallace, Murron was a revelation, a gift of God. His family, his friends, Scotland itself, all were blessings. And all had been taken away. For what? He did not know, and as long as he breathed, he would not know.

But maybe the pain had a purpose, and the loss of everything was meant to drive him here, where he could ask the pope to intervene on behalf of Scotland. The pope had the power; he could declare that he innocents of Scotland were under his protection; he could decree that he would evaluate all claims to the Scottish throne and would make a judgment himself as to who should sit upon it and could forbid Longshanks to meddle; he could enforce his decisions with the threat of excommunication, and maybe the whole problem could be settled with no more blood, no more killing.

That was the prayer of William Wallace’s heart in the Vatican that day. What happened to him didn’t matter; it never had mattered. If he had to be punished in this life or the next for fighting to be free, he would accept it. What ever the pope wanted to do to him for the battles he’d fought, the cites he’d burned, it was all right; he’d even accept the consequence for killing Bouchard – as long as the pope would listen to his plea for Scotland.

He wished he had been a better man with a heart less full of fire. But God had given him that heart and had brought him here to pray it and to speak it.

A voice behind him said, “His Holiness will see you now.”

William Wallace’s lips whispered, “Amen.”

The priest brought him into a large room and told him to kneel upon the cushions there. Wallace did as they instructed. The room was hung with tapestries and lit with candle; the air was thick with the scent of the hot tallow, but Wallace noticed no more details. The pope entered; was standing before his visitor with his hand outstretched almost before Wallace knew he was there. Wallace pressed his lips against the ring nestled in the soft flesh of the pope’s plump fingers and then, for the first time looked up at the pontiff’s face.

It was a round face atop a rounded body, make to look even more corpulent by the pure white vestments. The pope appeared tired, or perhaps it was impatient. Even has he was allowing his hand to be kissed, he had tiled his head toward the priest-counselor at this side, who held the letters King Philip had sent and was whispering rapidly into the pontiff’s ear. The pope left his hand hanging before Wallace as he listened, then, the whispering concluded, he made the sigh of the cross above Wallace’s head.

As the pope’s languid eyes full upon him, Wallace said with reverence, “Holy Father, thank you for receiving me.”

The pope nodded quickly.

“
I have come to ask—“

“
Your father knows all you needs before you ask him,” The pope broke in. Wallace, taught at Uncle Argyle’s knee, recognized the words of Jesus from the gospels. The words in the New Testament referred to the Father in heaven; the words from the pope clearly meant the father in the Vatican, the one with the advisors and the letters from the king. “Your sins are forgiven you,” the pope said. “Go in peace.”

He turned away and began to walk from the room.

“
But --- Your Holiness!”

The priests turned, shocked at their visitor’s insolence. They were more surprised still as Wallace stood “You are in the presence of His Holiness! One of them reminded the Scott.

Wallace lowered his head. “I mean every respect, every obedience. But it was not my sins – not mine alone –that I came to remove. It was those against my country.”