Braveheart (34 page)

Longshanks’s body trembled; he was making a great effort—to speak? To lift his hand? His jaw worked and there was a gurgle from his throat, but no words came out. And then Isabella realized what the king intended: he was shaking his head.

“Even now, you are incapable of mercy?” she asked. But hatred still glowed in his eyes. The princess looked at her husband. “Nor you. To you that word is as unfamiliar as love.”

Edward relished what he now had to tell her. “Before he lost his powers of speech, my lord king told me his one comfort was that he would live to know Wallace was dead.”

Edward was smiling.

Isabella turned from him and moved to Longshanks’s bedside. She leaned down and grabbed the dying king by the hair. The guards flanking the door started forward but the princess’s eyes flared at them with more fire than even Longshanks once showed—and the guards backed off. She bent down and hissed to Longshanks, so softly that even Edward couldn’t hear, “You see? Death comes to us all. And it comes to William Wallace. But before death comes to you, know this: your blood dies with you. A child who is not of your line grows in my belly. Your son will not sit long on the throne. I swear it.”

She let go of the old king. He sagged like an empty sack back onto his satin pillows. Without even a look at her husband, she strode out of the room, with the rattling breath of the dying king rasping the air like a saw.

70

SMITHFIELD IS A SECTION OF LONDON LYING TWO MILES from Westminster Hall. In 1305 it was a place of butchery, where cattle were slaughtered and dismembered for the tables of the city dwellers. It was also the customary place of execution.

And so it was to Smithfield, on the twenty-third day of August of that year, that William Wallace was taken, strapped to a wooden litter and dragged by horses across the cobblestones. A crowd had filled the open, grassy square surrounded by the meat shops, and the people were in a festive mood. Hawkers sold roast chickens and beer from barrels, while street entertainers juggled and performed comic acrobatics in hopes of collecting halfpennies.

When the royal horsemen arrived dragging Wallace, the crowd fell silent. When they cut him loose and led him through the crowd, the people began to jeer and throw at him anything handy: chicken bones, rotten vegetables, rocks, empty tankards. Wallace did not react as the missles pelted off him. The bone rattling journey, bouncing across the cobblestones, may have stunned him already—or perhaps the pain of rocks thrown against his face seemed nothing to him compared to what he knew was to come.

Grim magistrates prodded Wallace, and he climbed the execution platform. On the platform were a noose, a dissection table with knives in plain view, and a chopping block with an enormous ax. Wallace did not look away from these implements of torture.

It was both to him and the crowd that the lord high magistrate announced, “We will use it all before this is over.” Then his dark eyes fixed Wallace’s. “Or fall to your knees now, declare yourself the king’s loyal subject, and beg his mercy, and you shall have it.”

He emphasized
mercy
by pointing to the ax.

Wallace was pale and trembled—but he shook his head.

The crowd grew noisier as they put the noose around Wallace’s neck.

The princess heard the distant clamor from her room in the palace, and she lowered her head in helpless agony.

Helpless too were Hamish and Stephen, wearing the hooded smocks of English peasants, among the onlookers in Smithfield Square. They had come to this terrible moment because the only thing worse than being there was to not be there while this was happening, and they stood hoping to catch William’s eye, as if in doing so they could somehow shoulder some of his pain.

Lying in his kingly bedchamber, Longshanks rattled and coughed blood, as Edward, the future king, waited for him to die.

Robert the Bruce paced along the walls of his castle in Scotland. His eyes were haunted; he looked south, toward London, and in his soul he heard the sounds of the horrible spectacle as clearly as if his own body had been pitched before the executioners.

All of them had become but observers of the event. All—the crowded heads, the nobles who contented for the thrones, the peasants, the priests, the acrobats, and the fools, even the lord high magistrate and his muscled assistants who were conducting the proceedings—were powerless and insignificant. And yet the man with his hands and feet manacled, his cheeks bloody, his heart pounding out the final rhythms of his life—he stood and faced his executioners as if the whole world turned on what he would—or would not—do now.

There on the platform, a trio of burly hooded executioners cinched a rope around Wallace’s neck and hoisted him up a pole.

“That’s it! Stretch him!” the crowd yelled.

The warrior who had fought alone and at the head of thousands, who had defeated great armies and sacked cities, who had struck terror in the world’s mightiest nation, now dangled at the end of a rope, his face turning purple, his eyes bulging, the veins popping at his neck where the noose bit into his skin. The people cheered their approval. They knew this was not the end; much more was intended. But as the moments ticked on and on, the Scot at the end of the rope looked less to them like an enemy and more like simple flesh and blood. They grew silent, wondering at how much he could take, at how much his tormentors would extend his agony, before they lessened the torture—lessened it, that it could be extended.

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.

71

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.

Epilogue

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.

Isabella, queen of England, had a son. The boy, who became Edward III, was nothing at all like the man who is listed in the royal registry as his father.

And so we come to the end of my telling of the story of William Wallace. Whether I have told of him as he was or only as I wish him to have been, I cannot say.

But as I write these final lines, I think back to the last time I visited the place of his execution. The section of the Tower of London where he was imprisoned is known to this day as the Wallace Tower, and a visitor can stand in Westminster Hall and look up at the same windows he stared at when they condemned him, but it is at Smithfield, a place of slaughterhouses even now, where I have felt most reminded of how he lived and how he died; and it was the last time I was there when I felt it the most.