William and Murron had sat on opposite sides of the aisle during the wedding, she with her family, he alone. The words of the Latin mass, mysterious to most of the congregation, had bathed the ceremony with a majesty; and Murron, who had seen so many of her friends make the solemn journey into marriage and had turned down so many offers to take the trip herself, felt the spirit of the wedding in a way she had never felt it before, as if those holy words had been shaped at the dawn of time and sent down the ages specifically for her.
Then she and William had met at the door of the church as the congregation had filed out behind the bride and groom to begin the real celebration. As Murron and William came face to face, they scanned each other’s features suddenly and desperately, as if afraid that in the days since they’d last met everything had changed, they’d gotten it all wrong somehow, the face that had been filling their waking thoughts and their sleeping dreams was really just like every other. But once their eyes met, they saw the same dreams, the same promise, the same gleam, like looking into the face of someone who is gazing through the door of heaven.
So now they walked side by side, their steps matched, not daring to hold hands though their knuckles brushed as they matched steps. It seemed to them that everyone was watching them. And yet that didn’t seem to matter.
“Your father doesn’t like me, does he?” William said, smiling.
“It’s not you,” she said. “He dislikes that you’re a Wallace. He just says… the Wallaces don’t seem to live for very long.”
He didn’t have an answer for that. His father, his brother, his grandfather… Death was a part of life; diseases and accidents seemed to take someone every day. But only William’s mother had died in her bed of what was known as a natural cause. The men –well, with the Wallaces it seemed that death in battle was a natural cause. And yet as William walked beside Murron and looked at her auburn hair drawing in the warmth of the sunlight and her eyes absorbing the green of the grass and the blue of the sky, he wanted his hands to know nothing but the touch of her skin and the feel of a plow in his hands. He wanted life. Babies. Crops. Life! Here, forever, in peace.
And just as he drifted in the sweet flow of those vital dreams, he heard the horses. A group of riders appeared—mounted knights with banners and flying colors. At the head of the group rode an English nobleman, plumed and polished.
The wedding guests grew quiet. What could this be, the presentation of a gift? Would the noble grant the young couple a plot of land of their own? Would he give money as dowry? The bride’s father had been a good tenant, helping to fill the noble’s barn year after year. Surely such a surprise visit could only mean something extraordinary. The bride, a girl named Helen, with hair the color of a flaming sky, held tight to Robbie, her beloved, and watched them come.
The riders stopped in front of the bride and groom. The nobleman was gray, in his fifties. His face plump, his cheeks red and puffy above his beard. He rose in his stirrups and announced, “I have come to claim the right of prima noctes! As the lord of these lands, I will bless this marriage by taking the bride into my bed on the first night of her union!”
The warm breeze rattled through the trees; the horses shook their necks in their bridles, but no one could make a sound. Yes, the noble had such a right. He owned the land; in effect he owned the people, for he could require every able-bodied man to fight in any campaign he wished for up to one month out of every twelve. Yet in recent years the right of prima noctes had seldom been invoked. It created hatred, it destroyed families. Perhaps that was the whole point.
Stewart, the father of the bride, lunged forward. “No, by God!” he yelled.
The knights carried short battle pikes, and they were ready for this; in an instant their pikes were pointed down at the unarmed Scots. “It is my noble right,” the nobleman said quietly. “I have recently come into possession of these lands. Perhaps you have not been made sensible of late of the honors due to your lord. I am here to remind you.”
The bride, Helen, felt her husband’s arm go taut; even unarmed, Robbie and Stewart, his new father-in-law, were about to duck beneath the pike points, grab at the horses’ bridles, pull a few knights down, and kill as many as they could before they were killed themselves. But Helen was already reacting, holding Robbie tight, snatching at her father’s shoulder, pulling them both back, away from the blades and the confrontation. Perhaps she thought faster, or perhaps seeing the nobleman coming, she had already anticipated what the others there had not.
Everyone watched as she held them both close and whispered to them, frantically yet steadily. Their faces were red with fury, and they kept glancing u with eyes that blazed at the nobleman, and each time they did she whispered faster. And there was no one there that day, English or Scot, who doubted what she was telling them: that she would sooner do anything for only one night with that nobleman than lose the two of them—and God knew how many others—forever.
Then Helen stepped away from her new husband and her old father and held back tears as she allowed herself to be pulled up behind one of the horsemen. They rode away, her flaming red hair bouncing behind her, and she did not look back.
The Scots were left sickened. The bride’s mother was weeping among her friends; the groom and his father-in-law stared at the ground, their jaws clenched.
And William Wallace watched it all and kept his thoughts to himself.
17
MURRON LAY SLEEPLESS UPON THE STRAW MATS OF HER bed. All night she had thought of Helen. She kept seeing Helen’s eyes—those eyes refusing tears—as she stepped to the nobleman and consented to go with him. Every time she closed her own eyes, she saw Helen’s.
Then Murron heard a noise, a scratching at her window. A mouse? The wind? But the scratching was persistent, and she understood; she slipped to the window and opened it to find William out in the moonlight.
“Murron!”
“Shhh!” she whispered, but he was already whispering.
“Come with me.”
“I don’t think my parents are asleep. They’ve been restless all night!”
“So am I. So are you. Come with me.”
She slipped out the window and into his arms and to the ground. They ran across the grass to the trees, where William had two horses tied.
They rode, silhouettes along a ridge, as the horses’ breath blew silver clouds in the moonlight.
He guided her to a grove and asked her to dismount. She followed him as he led both horses into the grove and found it open in the center—a thick ring of trees around a small grassy circle. He tied the horses to a branch, took her hand, and drew her to the far side of the circle. The trees there opened onto endless sky. A precipice! She drew back in surprise, then gasped at the beauty she saw. They were high above a loch, gleaming in the moonlight. She gripped his hand. They looked out upon together all of Scotland, the whole world below them. So beautiful, it was sacred.