William galloped to Hamish and jumped down beside him.
“I’ll take her,” William said.
He had ignored a charging soldier; Hamish cut the man down just as he reached William’s back.
William clutched the body to his chest and climbed into the saddle, a tremendous physical feat that he seemed not to feel at all. Hamish ran and bounded into the saddle of his own horse, wheeled, and drove back two more soldiers with the slash of his own broadsword. Then he galloped after William.
William rode through the moonlight as he clutched Murron’s shrouded body to his chest. Hamish rode behind, protecting against any pursuit.
At the grove on the precipice, William dismounted and stretched Murron’s body gently on the ground. Hamish dismounted, too, with the spade he had used to dig up the old grave. He lifted his eyes to William’s face and saw the moonlight shining in the tears at the edges of his eyes. “I’ll wait… back there,” Hamish said.
“Hamish, I… thank…” William stammered.
Hamish put a hand on his friend’s shoulder, then quietly led the horses away.
William started to dig.
Later in the grove William sat looking at the new grave covered with leaves, completely hidden. He touched his hand to the earth.
Hamish was waiting by the stream as William came out of the grove. There was nothing to say. They mounted their horses and rode away.
26
WILLIAM SAT CROSS-LEGGED BESIDE A SMALL HOT FIRE OF dry peat and wet twigs. It had rained through all of that day and most of the previous night, and the woolens he had his men wore were soaked through; this made them wet but warm, for the woven cloth was an even better insulator when it thickened with moisture. Most of the men in the encampment were drowsy; the rain splattering on the canopy of trees above them was like a lullaby to the tired Highlanders.
But they had placed sentries at the perimeter of their camp; old Campbell had seen to that. Now he was lovingly honing broadswords to razor edges as he shared a whiskey jug with Hamish, who sat beside the fire next to William and looked from time to time at the darkness all around like a dog sniffing for danger.
For the last hour William had been staring, not at the glowing embers of the fire as Scots sharing whiskey were inclined to do but into the smoke rising above it, as fie he saw in its twists and curls some action unfolding there. But now he picked up a stick from the pile gathered to feed the fire, and brushing away the broken leaves that matted the forest floor, he began to scratch on the wet ground. It wasn’t writing; Hamish couldn’t read, but he knew letters when he saw them. These were patterns: squares, triangles, circles. Finally Hamish demanded, “What’re ya doing’?”
“Thinking,” William replied.
“Does it hurt?”
“What do we do when Longshanks sends his whole northern army against us?”
Old Campbell stopped what he was doing and sat down beside the fire. “Aye,” he said. “I’ve studied on the question myself. They have heavy cavalry. Armored horses that shake the very ground. We have spears and broadswords.”
“They’ll ride right over our formations,” Hamish said.
“Uncle Argyle and I used to talk about it,” William said. “No army in history has ever been able to stand before a charged of armored horse. No infantry has ever had the courage. And if they did stand, it wouldn’t be courage but foolishness. Without a barrier of fortifications, the horses are unstoppable. And if we are outnumbered, as we surely will be, then giving up maneuver by hiding behind earthworks is equally stupid, for the king’s archers would kill us all.”
“So we fight the Highland way,” old Campbell said. “Attack and run. Retreat into the hill country. Burn everything as we go. Leave nothing behind us for Longshanks’s army to eat.”
“And leave nothing behind worth fighting for.” William said. “What if we could win a victory? What if we could stand against the king’s whole army with an army of Scots?”
“Did your uncle tell you to think such things?” old Campbell wondered, peering at William from beneath a thicket of red bushy brows.
“He mused upon it,” William answered.
“And what did he conclude?” old Campbell demanded.
“That we would be slaughtered,” William said, smiling.
Old Campbell, satisfied, took a long pull at the whiskey jug.
But William was staring up at treetops stretching into the night sky like spikes to skewer the stars.
“We have carpenters among he men that have joined us?” William asked.
Hamish shrugged; sure, they must have.
“I want them to make a hundred spears. Fourteen feet long.”
“Fourteen?” Hamish began.
But before he could question William further, they were interrupted by a cry from the sentries: “Volunteers coming in!”
They looked to see half-dozen new volunteers being led in, blindfolded. William stood, flanked by Hamish and old Campbell. Ever since the action at Lanark, they had been receiving volunteers, who came to them through the old clan networks of Scottish resistance. More and more young men had been trying to join them as the story of William Wallace’s revolt was told and retold. Handling so many would-be rebels was becoming a problem for the secret network of trusted men in each village, who supplied William and his roving band with food, shelter, and information as they darted from place to place to stay ahead of the pursuit of the soldiers and the potential betrayal of any Scot who might be tempted by the ever-increasing reward money to sell information of Wallace’s whereabouts to the English. Old Campbell had had set up the security procedures; any man wishing to join Wallace’s band had to be know to the trusted villager who vouched for him, this was not foolproof, of course; men who could be counted on to stand beside in a fight or face torture without blurting your name to a captor might not be the best judges of character. The singleness of heart that made some men instinctively loyal made them blind to duplicity in other. Old Campbell knew there could be flaws in his network; William knew it, too.
So they looked over the volunteers the sentries brought in. All looked fit; none looked so fell fed that his sympathies might be suspect. Finally old Campbell gave a nod, and the sentries removed the blindfolds.
As the new recruits saw William Wallace for the first time, their faces glowed like the firelight. He was dirty like the others, his hair wet and tangles with leaves, his arms scratched, his skin pale from hiding by day and raiding by night. But they saw the fire inside him.
They recognized it. It was what they had come to follow. They rushed to him.
One of them, a tall slender man with the thick accent of western Scotland, fill upon his knees at William’s feet. “William Wallace!” the new recruit said, almost weeping with joy. “I have come to fight and die for you!”
“Stand up man. I’m not the pope,” William said.
“I am Faudron!” the new man spouted. “My sword is yours! And –and I bring you this tartan—”
He reached into his cloak, but before he could produce whatever he had there, both Hamish and Campbell had drawn their swords and put the points to his neck.
“We checked them for arms,” the sentry told them.
Carefully, Faudron pulled out a beautiful tartan scarf and stretched it out to William. “It’s your family tartan! My wife wove it with her own hands.”
William looked down at the checked cloth — newer, more deeply colored, but the same design as the strip of cloth he had given Murron. For a moment all of William’s thoughts drained from his mind; his head felt like a bell struck by a phantom hammer, ringing with the echoes of his lost love. He stood mute as Faudron untied the tattered old woolen cloth that William had used for so long to keep the rain off the back of his neck and then urged the new one around his shoulders in replacement. Finally William found his voice. “Thank your wife for me,” he said to Faudron, and the new man seemed moved to see the gift so fondly accepted.