He saw Wallace lift his broadsword. Its great flat edge caught the moonlight. It looked huge. It was huge—nearly five feet long. It would take an expert to use such a sword; a strong man, with balance and timing, could swing it so its massive blade could cut through anything.
Wallace leaned forward to spur the horse, then heard a shout.
“Wait!” Hamish shouted.
Hamish, Campbell, and four others rode up.
Again William and Hamish exchanged a look. “All right,” Hamish said. “Now we’re ready.”
William raised his sword. He screamed and charged.
His horse pounded toward the barricade, closer and closer to the English soldiers, their eyes grown wide and white with fear. For a moment they seemed to freeze; then half of them stood, raising bows. Not all at once, but like the sharp spattering of hail upon a stone fence, their bowstrings twanged.
The arrows cut through the air, toward William. They sliced the air around his head, they tore his clothes, but none caught his flesh; almost all were fired high in haste, and there was no time for a second volley. He charged through them, his horse leaping the barrier as William simultaneously swung the broadsword. The soldier who had first seen William and judged his heart for battle by the stillness of his face now saw that he was not just good with the sword, he was an expert and more. The stroke was smooth, appearing effortless and unhurried, and the tip, at the end of a huge arc, whistled faster than the arrows. The blade bit through the corporal’s helmet and took off the upper half of his head.
The soldiers tried to rally to shoot him in the back as his horse leaped over them—one of them had sighted William’s back—but the other Scots crashed into them. William’s charge had mesmerized them; they had forgotten about the others. Now, as all fights become, it turned into a melee, the soldiers trying to rely on their training while the Scots gave themselves to wild fury. Old Campbell took an arrow through the shoulder but kept hacking with his sword. Hamish battered down two men with a huge ax. Still it was but a few against more than twenty, and no force in battle is greater than the confidence that one’s own side will prevail. The soldiers, overcoming their first urge to flee, saw their advantage in numbers and had just begun to swarm over their outnumbered attackers when more Scots arrived. Carrying hoes, hay scythes, and hammers, they charged into the backs of the soldiers and overwhelmed them.
William raced on through the village, spurring his horse, dodging obstacles in the narrow streets—chickens, carts, barrels. Soldiers popped up: the first he galloped straight over; the next he cut down with a forward stroke, and another he chopped down on his left side with a backhand. With each swing of his broadsword, a man died.
A village woman shouted from her doorway, “William Wallace! Go, William! Go!” He galloped on, his farmer neighbors and people from the village following in his wake.
Hesselrig heard the approaching shouts. He and thirty more of his men were barricaded around the village square. The sounds were not comforting; they heard the panicked cries of English soldiers and the frenzied screams of the Scots drawing nearer. He called out to his men, “Don’t look so surprised! We knew he’d bring friends! They’re no match for professional soldiers!”
They saw Wallace gallop into sight, then suddenly stop and rein his horse into a side street.
Hesselrig and his men didn’t like this: Where did he go? Which way would he come from? And then they heard the horses and saw the other Scots at the top of the main street. The soldiers unleashed a volley of arrows in their direction.
They were fitting a second volley of arrows to their bowstrings when Wallace ran in—on foot—and cut down two soldiers. At the same time the other Scots were charging. The startled soldiers broke and ran in every direction.
Hesselrig, abandoned, ran too, breaking for the darkness of a narrow lane. William saw him go and pursued him, not hurrying, not wishing to hurry, moving steadily now s if he had all the time in the world and nothing could stop him.
Not far along a twisting lane, the bulky magistrate faltered. He turned to fight, and William slashed away his sword.
“No! I beg you… mercy!” Hesselrig pleaded.
William stunned him with a blow from the butt of his sword.
All around the village center, it was a scene of mayhem. A panic is never pretty, but there are times in battle when the routed soldiers are allowed to flee. This was not one of those times. The Scots were killing with a vengeance. But when they saw William dragging Hesselrig back down the street, they broke off pursuing the English soldiers and stopped to watch. Pulling Hesselrig by the hair, William hauled him back into the village square, hurled him against the well, stood over him with heaving lungs and wild eyes, and stared at Murron’s murderer.
“Please. Mercy!” the magistrate begged.
William’s eyes shifted, his gaze falling on a stain: Murron’s blood in a dark dry splash by the wall of the well; the blotch of death dripped down onto the dirt of the street. William turned back to Hesselrig, jerked back the magistrate’s head, and drew the length of the broadsword across his throat.
The other Scots were silenced by what they had just seen and done. On old Campbell’s face was a look of reverence and awe.
“Say grace to God, lads. We’ve just seen the coming of the Messiah,” Campbell proclaimed.
The English soldiers had seen it, too. One soldier, hidden on the roof of a house, seized the moment and slid down and ran for his life.
William staggered a few steps and collapsed to his knees. There in the dirt beside the well he saw a similar checked pattern, and with trembling fingers, he lifted the strip of tartan, filthy now with blood and dirt, that he had given Murron on their wedding day.
He seemed deaf to the sounds around him; for not just the Scottish farmers but the townspeople, too, had begun a strange hi-lo chant. “Wal—lace. Wal—lace. Wal—lace! Wal—lace! WAL-LACE!
The cry the Scots made in Lanark in June of 1296 was the ancient Highland chant of war. William’s wild eyes slowly regained their focus. He looked at the blood of Murron; he looked at the blood of the Englishmen on the sword his father had left him.
22
IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE BATTLE, THE FARMERS HAD withdrawn to Campbell’s house. A dozen men were there. William sat on the floor, his back against the wall, staring at nothing and saying nothing; he had not spoken since he had spurred the horse out of the barn on his way to Lanark. Old Campbell lay by the hearth surrounded by several men who tended his shoulder wound, under Campbell’s own direction. “First take that jug of whiskey off the table,” he told them. “No, don’t drink it, ye fool, pour it into the wound. Aye, straight in! I know it seems a waste of good whiskey, but indulge me!”
The arrow had plugged into the meat of his shoulder and had been an awful chore to get out. Yet it was not the wound itself that Campbell knew could take his life, but the possible infection afterward. Campbell’s friends did as he instructed. “Now,” he said, “use the poker.” They took a glowing poker from the fire and ran it through Campbell’s shoulder, where the arrow went. There was a terrible sizzle, and the farmers grimaced at the very sound of it. Old Campbell’s jaws clinched and his eyes watered, but all he said then was, “Ah. Now that’ll get your attention, lads.” Then he looked down at his left hand. His thumb was missing. “Well, bloody hell, look at this!” he said. “Now it’s nothing but a flyswatter.”