“Tonight then.”
“My mother is suspicious already! Not tonight!”
“Then when?”
“Tonight!”
She hurried away from him, leaving him smiling.
Drunken English soldiers were standing by an ale cask, and they spotted Murron moving through the fair, glowing, beautiful. The soldiers smirked at each other; as Murron passed, one of them grabbed her wrist.
“Where are you going, lass?” the soldier asked.
“Let go,” she said.
A second drunken soldier piped up. “Why don’t you marry my friend here? Then I’ll take the first night!” The laughter of his friends encouraged him; he pulled Murron into his arms; she shoved him away with surprising strength, and he staggered back to the greater laughter of his friends. For a moment Murron thought they would let it go at that—and then one of them grabbed her from behind, spun her around, and kissed her hard on the lips.
She broke free and slapped him—hard and sharp. It knocked the grin off his toothless mouth. The first soldier she pushed now threw her down against sacks of grain, and they were all over her, pinning her down, ripping her clothes, a full-scale public gang rape. As the townspeople tried to move in, the three soldiers waiting their turn at Murron pulled their knives, and the townspeople backed off.
The soldier pinning Murron to the ground, his breath hot with the stench of ale, growled into her face, “Bitch, who do you think you are?” He jammed his mouth down against hers for a long, awful time.
But then he tried to pull back, his scram muffled; she was biting off the end of his tongue! He pulled away, clawing at his mangled mouth. Now his thoughts of rape were forgotten; he pulled back his huge fist to crush it against her face…
But the hand was caught—by William! He jabbed the soldier’s elbow in a direction it was never meant to bend. The soldier, his mouth already bloody, howled in new agony, but William still wouldn’t let him go; he swung the soldier by his rubbery arm into his comrades.
Two of the soldiers leapt forward, swinging their short swords; William ducked and knocked their ale cask into their knees, then lifted the whole table where they were sitting and rammed it into the faces of two more attackers.
“William!” Murron yelled.
Her shout was too late to warn him; as he was facing one soldier with a knife, another grabbed his neck from behind. But William’s strength was great and his adrenalin greater; as the soldier in front stabbed, William whirled and the knife sunk into the soldier holding him. William snatched a leg from the shattered table and crushed the stabber’s skull. All the rapists, the whole gang of them, were bleeding on the ground.
“William Wallace! William Wallace!” a woman in the marketplace yelled.
But there was no time for celebration. One of the fallen soldiers had begun to scream out. “Rebels! Rebels! Help!”
More soldiers heard the call and came running. But the village fold who had cowered before the brandished weapons of the rapists had been transformed by the sight of a single Scot decimating the whole gang. A woman shoved a broom across the shins of the first new soldier to run up, tripping him onto his chin; others in the crowd bunched together to delay the other reinforcements. “Run, William! Run!” the woman with the broom yelled.
But William was gripping Murron. “Are you all right?”
“Go, William! Get away!” she pleaded.
Two new soldiers fell on William. Murron plunged her thumb into the eye of one and raked her fingernails across the face of the other; William spun and crushed their heads together like pecans and grabbed at the loose traces of the horse that pulled the flower cart. “Take the horse!” he said.
“You take it!”
“They’ll chase me! Then you take the horse! I’ll meet you at the grove!” He darted off through the crowd as Hesselrig, the magistrate, and more of his garrison arrived. They seemed to swarm in from every direction, dozens of them! None stopped to ask what had happened, they instinctively gave chase to the blood-splattered Scot who ran the instant they appeared. William weaved through the narrow streets of the village, knocking over baskets, jumping carts, scrambling over low rooftops as the soldiers stumbled after him, and the townspeople blocked their way.
Murron saw that all the soldiers had gone after William; she was clear! She darted toward the cart horse, but someone grabbed her leg. It was the soldier with the bloody mouth, whose tongue she had bitten off, whose arm William had broken. With his good hand, he had gotten her ankle in a death grip.
She couldn’t get free. She stumbled and tried to kick him, and still he held on with his one hand. Grotesquely, through his mangled mouth, he shouted at the others. “Stop this one! She’s with him!”
Two soldiers heard him and started back. Frantically, Murron stomped her free foot against the soldier’s face and finally broke free. She jumped on the horse, kicked its flanks, and the horse ran.
William, hopping from roof to roof across the narrow streets of the village, saw her escaping. He slipped down into an empty alley, scrambled low across a deserted stall, and ran for the brush of the river.
Murron galloped the horse down the narrow twisting lanes. Free! But the town wasn’t made for a steeplechase. As she looked back to be sure William had made it, the low hanging sign of a tavern caught her and raked her off the horse.
William reached the edge of the town and slipped into the trees by the river; the magistrate and his soldiers were running every which way, but they had lost him. Smiling at the thought that Murron had made it, too, William headed deeper into the trees.
At that moment Murron’s head was clearing; she was in one piece, nothing broken! She started to get up, but the soldiers’ pikes appeared over her, and then the face of Hesselrig came into view. It was red with too much exertion after too much drink. He was furious, and he was leering. “So this is the little whore he was fighting for,” he said.
At the grove above the precipice, William moved into the shelter of the trees, expecting to see Murron. She was not there. He spoke her name softly, thinking she must be hiding: “Murron…” He listened and heard only the rustling of the wind through the treetops.
“Murron!” he yelled.
Nothing except the wind.
20
INSIDE THE ROYAL MAGISTRATE’S HEADQUARTERS, MURron was tied in a seated position on the floor, an oak staff behind her elbows, her mouth stuffed with burlap and bound with cord. Soldiers stood at the doors and windows; Hesselrig stood over her. Her eyes were frightened, and yet they were defiant. How can she look at me that way? the magistrate wondered. Just a girl… Doesn’t she fear us at all? He thought about what she was seeing. He was himself an English soldier, promoted through the ranks to become an officer; he had led men in battle, the scars that marked his face and hands testified that he had spilled much blood—his own, and that of many enemies—on his way to what he wanted. Don’t I look serious? He asked himself. Don’t I frighten her?
His corporal entered. “Nothing,” the corporal said, shaking his head.
From outside they heard drunken shouting. “English! English!” They looked outside and saw the village drunk weaving in the shadows, calling out to them. “Not so strong, huh? One Scot buggers six of you!”
One of the English soldiers standing guard outside threw a stone all the drunk; it clattered across the paving stones of the square, and the drunk chuckled and stagger off into the darkness.
The soldiers inside were edgy. One of them grabbed Murron by the hair and jerked her head back. “I’ll show you what an Englishman can do—”