But as they saw the main body of Scots on the road, the civilians fled across the farmland, leaving behind a tangle of carts for the army to shove out of the way like a plow cutting through a field.
In camp two nights before, Wallace had asked old Campbell to find him the best carpenters in their army. These men Wallace combined with a group of Highlanders handpicked for their ability to move quickly through hostile ground. He had given these men instructions and sent them off while it was still dark. Now, as they reached the last thick stand of trees before York, one of those same Highlanders ran out to him and led Wallace and his lieutenants into the woods, where they came upon a massive contraption; its wooden wheels were as tall as the carpenters who had made them, and piled above them were thick trees lashed together and covered with layers of tangled brush to screen stones and arrows away from the warriors who would push it all.
Wallace nodded his approval. The battering ram was ready.
Standing on one of the tall stone parapets flanking the entrance of his city, just as night was falling, the governor of York looked down at the people far below him, banging on the thick wooden gate and begging to be let in, and their cries made him angry. He was tempted to order his archers to shoot them. “What is wrong with those people?!” He demanded of the captain who stood next to him, surveying their defenses. “Don’t they know this city cannot be taken?”
The captain saw the irony of the question as the citizens who lived outside the wall and were even now pleading and lifting their children in the air, as if showing them to the soldiers lining the parapets would soften their hearts enough to unbar the great gates and allow a few more to rush inside. A professional soldier, the captain saw the danger; the desperate citizens saw the city as secure — their cries made those already inside feel safer still — but the truth was the York was vulnerable. The governor has dispatched more than half of the city’s potential defenders to the various outlying towns and hamlets that had been calling fro reinforcements. Now York itself was jammed with the governor’s supporters, flatterers, favorites, and hangers-on, everyone who fled to the shadow of the great city at the first whiff of trouble and who had the influence to gain admittance. But there were not enough fighting men.
The captain, who made more of Wallace’s victory at Stirling than did the governor, knew it was possible that Wallace had intentionally concocted the depletion of the city’s forces through a shrewdly planned campaign of raiding to draw the defenders away. Wallace was unpredictable; and these royal relatives who ran the English army, they were too predictable. The captain hurried off to direct the preparations for defense against a full assault, walking away even as the royal governor was talking.
“We will not allow a bandit, to panic the greatest city in northern England!” the governor was saying to no one now. And then, looming out of the gray twilight, he saw them, the entire Scottish army coming at the city in a trot. Among the vanguard of foot soldiers rode William Wallace, huge broadsword strapped across his back. Behind him was the ram.
The civilians saw him, too. Their screams grew more frantic, they pounded on the gate with increased panic — and then suddenly they fled.
The captain appeared again beside the governor, and looking at those who had been shut out, running now to get as far away from the city as possible, he thought, Do they flee because they know we won’t let them in? Or is it because they no longer wish to be inside?
Watching the Scots come on like an endless black cloud building into a relentless storm, the governor turned to the captain and asked, “Find every Scottish civilian in the city — traders, craftsmen, and their families all of them — and bring them to me. I especially want the ones wearing the Scottish cloth. Fetch them all.
The captain did not understand the purpose of the order, but he did not challenge it, for he saw on the governor’s face a look worthy of his uncle, Longshanks the King.
The battering ram, thrust by two dozen of Wallace’s favorite Highlanders, picked up speed and slammed into the wooden gate of the city. With the collision, the battle was on. Flaming arrows sliced through the night; pots of boiling oil splashed down from the parapets onto the attackers who swarmed the gate.
The oil beat the first wave of Scots back, but Wallace rushed forward and grabbed the ram cart with his own hands. The attackers rallied to him and helped him slam the gate again and again. The arrows, stones, and oil from the parapets caught some men, but the ram was well designed and sheltered most. The gates, rising twenty feet high, cracked and then broke altogether, but behind it was an awful tangle of carts, broken sheds, impenetrable rubbish. Wallace grabbed a torch, threw it into the wooden tangle, and shouted, “Black! Wait for it to burn!”
Inside the city, the captain hurried into the tower room where the governor had taken refuge. “M’lord, they’ve breached the wall!”
“Then do as I ordered.”
Outside the walls, the Scots waited, biding their time as the barrier burned. Suddenly they looked up in horror, the English were throwing the bodies of hung Scots over the wall. Men, women, even children, dangling at the ends of nooses.
The Highlanders stared in mute shock. Wallace was frozen; for a moment he was a boy again, back in MacAndrews’s barn, staring up at hanged bodies he could scarcely believe were real.
His men charged forward.
“Stop!” Wallace screamed. “Not yet! Listen to me!” The clansmen heeded the only voice they would have obeyed at that moment. “They wish to frighten us! Or goad us into attacking too soon! But don’t look away! Look!"
The Scots looked at the hanging bodies.
“Behold the enemy we fight!” Wallace thundered. “We will be more merciful than they have been. We will spare women, children, and priests! For all others, no mercy!”
Wallace drew his broadsword. The burning debris inside the gate collapsed and left a tunnel through the fire. Wallace screamed and led the charge.
35
WITHIN THE TAPESTRIES WALLS OF HIS LONDON APARTMENTS, Price Edward and his friend Peter heard a contingent of horsemen clatter into the courtyard below. They looked out the window and saw the arrival of Longshanks. They leaned back into the room, and Edward began to pace nervously.
“It is not your fault! Stand up to him,” Peter urged.
Edward showed Peter the dagger he had concealed in his belt behind his back. “I will stand up to him and more.”
Longshanks banged the door open and staled in angrily, followed by two advisors. First he glared at Peter with obvious loathing, then turned his piercing stare to his own son. “What news of the north?” Longshanks said, his voice husky with anger.
“Nothing new, Majesty,” Edward answered. “We have sent riders to speed any word.” They had known for some time of the massacre at Stirling, but they had heard nothing for days from York. Edward had sent an angry message to his cousin, York’s governor, demanding to know why no intelligence had been coming down from the north. His cousin knew Longshanks was returning to London and would be furious. Edward suspected his cousin was intentionally trying to erode the prince’s relationship with the king even further.