“Leave her! I want her unmarked,” Hesselrig ordered.
The corporal moved closer to him and spoke in a low voice. “Our informants tell us his name is William Wallace. Has a farm out in the valley. I say we burn it.”
“Not his farm. I want him,” Hesselrig said.
“But how, if we can’t find him?” the corporal wondered. None of Hesselrig’s other subordinates would have pressed him this way, but the magistrate and his second-in-command were veterans in this ugly business of suppression. “You know how these people are. Once he’s into the hill country, we can look for our whole lives and never find a trace of him.”
But Hesselrig, his attention wandering back to Murron, had noticed something peeking out at the top edge of her dress. He reached down to her, slid his finger to the bare skin below her throat, and fished out the strip of tartan tied around her neck and concealed beneath her smock. She squirmed as if to bite or kick him, but trussed up as she was, she could move but little.
Hesselrig united the strip of cloth and held it up, so the corporal could see it better. “These Highlanders, they weave this cloth into special patterns. They give them as…” And then it hit him. He looked down at Murron with a smile of pleasant surprise. “You’re married! Aren’t you, girl.”
Hesselrig looked from Murron to the cloth to Murron to the corporal. “We make him come to us,” Hesselrig said.
At the head of his entire garrison. Hesselrig led Murron, her arms still bound behind her, into the village square. His soldiers tied her to one of the posts of the central well that served the whole village. The townspeople didn’t want to be near the soldiers, but they hung on the fringes of the square, too curious to pull away.
Hesselrig looked all around at them and shouted to the people. “An assault on the king’s soldiers is the same as assaulting the king!” he shouted.
He looked down at Murron, her mouth bound, her eyes defiant.
“So under the authority of my king—and yours—I exercise his rightful power!”
He pulled his dagger from his belt, and as calmly as a man might sign his name in a letter to a stranger, he drew the blade across Murron’s throat.
Her eyes sprang open like a doe’s; she tried to cough. Blood wept from the gash across her throat. In but a moment, she sagged dead.
The townspeople were struck dumb. Even some of the soldiers gaped in mute horror.
Hesselrig turned calmly to his men. “Now,” he said. “Let this scrapper come to me.”
William slid through the shadows and reached the barn at the Campbell farm. He slipped inside, and there he found a half-dozen men, gathered in the narrow light of a shielded lantern; among them were Campbell and Hamish, who spotted William first, and cried out, “William!”
William moved into the light; he was scratched and bruised, worn from running, sick with worry. And the sight of these men gathered there did nothing to soothe his fears. “Have you seen Murron?” he asked them. His friends stared at him mutely. “She got away! I saw her! I saw her!” William insisted. When still they said nothing, he turned to dash out the door again, but Hamish was ready for that, and he and another stout fellow gripped William’s arms, as old Campbell closed in and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“We heard a rumor. Only a rumor!” Campbell said. “We’ve sent a man to—”
But then he was interrupted by the sound of a horse galloping up. Campbell peered through a crack in the wall and saw their rider returning. “That’s him!” Campbell said.
They pushed the doors and the rider, Liam Little, galloped in. He was pale; he started to speak, then faltered as he saw William.
“What is it? What?!” William pleaded.
“Tell us, man!” Campbell ordered.
“The magistrate… he tied her to a post in the town square,” Little said. His face was already red from the hard riding, but now it grew more flushed as he worked to get the next words out. Finally he added, “And cut her throat.”
William dragged his holders across the barn and pulled Little to the ground. “You’re lying!” William shouted.
But when William saw the bloodshot horror in Little’s eyes, he knew the story was true.
Outside that barn were stars, above a Scottish valley, where grew heather and purple thistles, and waters of crystal streams tumbled into depthless lochs. But on that night, as William Wallace’s cries of grief tore from within that barn and across that empty valley, the stars stopped singing, the thistles faded, the brooks ceased their laughter, and the once-beautiful lochs, at least for him, became but great puddles of tears.
21
THE MEN INSIDE THE BARN HAD WRESTLED WILLIAM DOWN to a seat on the hay. Hamish stood close and kept an eye on him. Campbell mumbled with a knot of friends in the corner.
“Has MacClannough heard?” Campbell wondered to Little.
“He must’ve. The villagers went running, as if they could get away from the sight of it,” Little said.
“We’ll see to him,” Campbell said. “But first we’ve got to hide young Wallace.” He moved over to William and spoke softly, gently. “Laddie… we’ve got to get you someplace safe. The soldiers’ll be comin’.”
William said nothing; but Hamish said, “Let ‘em come.”
“You bite your tongue!” his father snapped. “We’ll strike back, but not now!” He turned back to William again, leaned down to him, lowered his voice. “William, it’s… awful. But like the loss of your father and brother, the pain will shrink in time.”
William stared. Campbell patted him, then said to Hamish, “Get him up to the cave. We’ll—”
William darted before Campbell could react and jumped to Little’s horse. He was already up onto its back before Hamish could grab the reins in a grip that no man or horse could have broken. “Not yet, William!” Hamish boomed. “That’s what the magistrate wants! He killed her to have you!” For Hamish, though the strongest man there, was not a mere brute, he was also his clever father’s son.
“Then he shall have me,” William said.
William started down at Hamish. Hamish stared up at William and still held the reins of the horse. But something passed between them in their looks.
Hamish let go.
William wheeled the horse instantly and galloped out, breaking right through the latch of the door.
Campbell slapped his son hard and shouted, “You let him go!”
“Because I’m going, too,” Hamish said quietly.
“And I,” Stewart joined in.
“And I,” Little said.
“I’ll get the bloody weapons,” Campbell said.
William rode to town, alone on the galloping horse. Tears for Murron spilled from his eyes and tore across his face, pushed by the wind. He made one stop, at his farmhouse, and from a spot beneath the thatch of his roof, he removed the broadsword that had once belonged to his father.
All through the valley, the farmers who had been in the barn streamed after him, along every road, path, and trail that lead into the village. At every farmhouse they shouted. “The magistrate’s murdered Murron MacClannough! And William Wallace is on his way to town!”
At a barrier across the main road into the center of Lanark Village were twenty professional soldiers, entrenched, fully armed with bows, pikes, swords. Their senses were alert; they knew the danger. Then one of them heard a horse’s snort and peered out into the moonlit darkness.
There, at the far turning of the road, just over a bow shot away, sat William Wallace upon his horse. He had stopped, rock still. He was staring at them, all twenty of them, and he sat there all alone, and yet there was absolutely no fear in his face. The soldier knew the look of fear—even the bravest men had it before battle—but this was a different look, and the soldier had seen it before, but only rarely. It was the face of a man readying himself for slaughter—not his own, but that of others.