But Wallace and his men moved only in one direction; forward. They hacked at anything they could reach: necks, faces, backs, it didn’t matter. The waters below the bridge ran red with blood.
“Use –use the archers!” Talmadge sputtered.
But the archers saw that they were useless now, and they had begun to smell the stink of panic rolling through the army; they were edging back, looking for a route to flee.
On the bridge, the Scots kept carving their way through the English soldiers — nothing could stop them. Wallace was relentless; each time he swung, a head flew of an arm. Hamish and Stephen fought beside him and swung the broadsword with both hands. Old Campbell lost his shield in the grappling; and English swordsman whacked at him and took off his left hand, but Campbell battered him to the ground with his right one and stabbed him.
The Scots reached the English side of the bridge and began to build a barrier with the dead bodies.
The English were not without courage. Cheltham, rallying the infantry blocked on the castle side of the bridge, led the desperate counterattack. The Scots made an impenetrable barrier of slashing blades, yet still Cheltham kept coming. As his men reeled back, he urged his horse into a gallop, intending to punch a hole through the Scottish barricade…
And Wallace stood to his full height, swung the broadsword, and hit Cheltham with a vertical slash that parted his helmet, his hair, and his brain.
Talmadge had seen enough; he wheeled his horse about and galloped away.
“Bloody coward!” his remaining general spat. But there was no time for that; he had to save the army. “We are still five thousand!” he shouted. “Rally! Make a stand!”
The English forces below the castle were trying to form up for a second counterattack, just a Mornay and the Scottish horsemen, having forded the river high upstream, came crashing into the English flank. The English reinforcements were taken completely by surprise.
Now it was a rout.
At the bridge, Wallace saw the English soldiers in utter panic, running in every direction, and being cut down.
And the Scottish soldiers tasted something Scots had not tasted for a hundred years: victory.
Wallace looked at the aftermath of the battle: bodies on the field, soldiers lying impaled, stacks of bodies on the bridge, the bridge slicked with blood.
Before it could all sink in, William was lifted on the shoulders of his men. And even the noblemen took up the chant, alongside the commoners…
“Wal—lace! Wal—lace! WAL—LACE!” the Scots chanted.
31
ON A FIELD IN FRANCE, THE CONTINENTAL ARMY OF Longshanks the King was encamped on a field of grass, yellow in the dry summer. Longshanks was in his command pavilion, looking at maps and deriding his generals. His campaign to dominate France had worked itself into a maddening stalemate. Some of the French nobles remained loyal to their king, saying the crown of France should be worn by a Frenchman. Other nobles accepted Longshanks’s argument that, as a Plantagenet, he was a Frenchman. This was not quite true, of course, but thrones were contested throughout Europe on shakier claims. Even if Longshanks was not properly in line for the French throne, his daughter-in-law was, and his future grandchildren would be. So the struggle in France, like royal wars everywhere, became a contest of bluff and bribery, with bits of fighting and military action lumped among great layers of political maneuver. It was maddening for Longshanks. He felt the age in his bones. His joints ached in the cold night dampness and he had developed a persistent cough.
He took it out on his general. “We should have been to Paris by now! Now the army will have to winter here!”
The generals had themselves grown so frustrated that they were willing to speak up in the king’s presence. “Sire, we are not prepared to winter here,” one of them said. “We could lose half our men to starvation and cold.”
Longshanks knew this already; he accepted the realities of war and had planned accordingly. “In the spring we will move our army across from Scotland,” he said.
A messenger, exhausted and mud-spattered, rode up, jumped from his lathered horse, and hurried into the tent. He bowed sharply and handed the king a scroll. As the king read, his face, which his advisors had been noticing was a bit pale of late, took on a flush they had not seen for some time. Then slowly Longshanks lowered the scroll, and through a mouth set stiff in anger, he said, “We have no more army in Scotland.”
THE GUARDIAN
32
INSIDE THE GREAT HALL OF EDINBURGH CASTLE, WILLIAM Wallace knelt before Angus Craig, foremost of Scotland’s ancient elders, who lifted a silver sword and dubbed William’s shoulders. “I knight thee Sir William Wallace!” Craig declared.
William rose and faced the great hall, crowded with hundreds of new admirers as well as his old friends: Hamish, his father — with one loose sleeve, but otherwise none the worse for wear — and Stephen of Ireland, all in new clothes and armor. Their faces were clean, their bruises healed, the blood washed from their hands and hair. William had never seen them look so sparkling. The stood erect and proud among so many others who had never once fought for the positions of power their finery proclaimed.
But those others, they were Scots, too. They stood looking at William with — what was it exactly that he saw in their eyes? It was like wonder, but not that sweet awe of a child lying on his back on the summer heather and looking up at the stars. Just behind the eyes of these noblemen in their furs and the ladies in their lace was the confusion of something not quite making sense to them.
In ten minutes, when William had walked out of the room and stood at a window alone, overlooking Scotland’s ancient royal city, he would understand what this look had really meant. Those people had never seen anything like him and his friends. To nobles, common Scottish warriors were mere brutes, but now they were confronted by something strange and baffling: a commoner who had outsmarted Scotland’s enemies. This was disturbing; it shook their assumptions. Yet they freely admitted their admiration of the strategy that had won the battle. They like to speak about it as if Strategy was a living thing unto itself, that is somehow rose up apart from the men who created it and put it into action. May be thinking of it this way made them more comfortable, for to admit otherwise would be to say that commoners were, if not superior, at least equal to the nobles.
William Wallace would see all that later when he had time to think about the new perspectives he had from this pinnacle of admiration. He would also see that this was a tremendous opportunity to unite both noble and common Scot in a campaign unlike any they had ever made.
But those were the thoughts of reason and reflection. Now, as he stood among the sparkle and the music of the castle, his mind did not yet weave the threads of sensation; it jus took them all in.
And in the center of his chest was an emptiness.
He lifted his eyes to the rear of the hall where the great balcony was backed by a magnificent arched window. He stared at the sunlight streaming in their, and in the center of is blinding brilliance, he imagined her familiar form: Murron, so real to him in this moment of triumph that he could almost see her, glowing alike an angel, could almost speak to her, touch her.
Almost.
Wallace reached inside the ornamental chestplate the nobles of Scotland had given him, and his fingers found the cloth that Murron had embroidered with a thistle, her gift to him on their wedding day.