“Seorus,” Wallace broke in, “let’s move.”
Seorus waved for his clan to follow him, and Wallace rode ahead with the horsemen into the crossroads itself. There they found it exactly as Seorus said: a royal carriage to the side of the tent, out in the middle of a sun-drenched meadow, with nearly a dozen soldiers milling about, and not stocky Englishmen clothed in red but slender Frenchmen in royal French blue.
Wallace and his men rode in a complete circle around the tent. The soldiers watched warily, but they were disciplined and made no threatening moves. The Scots stopped thirty feet from the tent entrance.
No sound from the tent. Wallace rested his hand on the handle of his broadsword, ready.
“Longshanks! I have come!”
Servants pulled back the sides of the tent door, and a tall, slender, shapely female figure appeared. There in the shadows, she looked just like Murron! William was not the only one who noticed the resemblance; he glanced at Hamish and Campbell and saw them haunted by it, too. Was this another dream? William paled as she stepped into the morning sun. She moved toward him, her face lowered. It was Murron! He was dreaming again — or he was insane.
She reached him, lifted her face — and he saw the princes.
Not Murron! And yet as William saw the princes more closely, he was still shaken by the resemblance. In the way she carried herself, in her shape, in the way the regal lace framed her face as wedding lace had once framed Murron’s she hunted the empty rooms in the secret chambers of his heart.
And while the princes reminded, William Wallace of everything he had loved and lost, he haunted her with everything she wanted and had never found. Tall, powerful, commanding his shoulders thick, his hair wild, his eyes soft, even pained. A man facing the hatred of the world’s most powerful king; a man who had won great battles and commanded armies, yet who looked as if he could spur his horse away right now and ride away from adoration and glory and never miss any of it. She had never seen a man like this. She had never known such a one existed.
Wallace dismounted and moved to face her. Their eyes hung on each other. She saw something that she had not seen in the face of a man in her whole life. It was grief. Whatever else they said about him, this must she knew was true:” He had loved the woman he had lost; the pain of it was still etched in his face.
She surprised him by bending at the knee in a half-submissive yet proud curtsey.
“I am the Princess of Wales,” she said.
“Wife of Edward, the king’s son?” William asked.
She nodded; somehow she was already ashamed. “I am sorry to be a disappointment. I come as the king’s servant and with his authority,” the princess said.
“It’s battle I want, not talk.”
“But now that I am here, will you speak with a woman?” When he said nothing, she led him under the pavilion, a purple canopy shading rich carpets laid on the bare ground. Hamish, Campbell, and Stephen dismounted and flowed, shouldering their way in beside the princess’s guards, so they could watch Wallace’s back.
Inside the Scots found more opulence than they had ever before seen, even in Edinburgh Castle. A carved, gleaming table supported a silver serving bowl full of fruit, and even the apples and oranges there seemed to sparkle as if they too had been polished. Attending the princess were a beautiful young handmaiden — Nicolette — and a thin graying nobleman in a rich tunic embroidered with the king’s symbols. The royal servants had brought a throne for the princess and a lower chair for Wallace. She sat; he refused the chair. She studied him and took in his anger and his pride.
“I understand you have recently been given the rank of knight,” the princess began.
“I have been given nothing. God makes men what they are.”
“Did God make you the sacker of peaceful cities? The executioner of the king’s nephew, my husband’s own cousin?”
“York was the staging point for every invasion of my country! And as for that cousin, I regret that he had but one head to lose. To try to repel us, he hanged a hundred Scots, even women and children, from the city walls.”
“That is not possible!” Isabella protested. But she knew Longshanks and knew his family, She glanced at Hamilton, the richly dressed royal crony that the king had sent with her as both advisor and informant, and Hamilton averted his eyes.
“Longshanks did far worse the last time he took a Scottish city!” Wallace said.
Wallace watched as Hamilton, his silver hair smoothly combed, his beard finely groomed in the style of the court, his white hands graceful and delicate, tilted himself toward the princess and said softly in Latin, “he is a murdering bandit. He lies.”
Wallace replied in Latin, “I am no bandit! And I do not lie!”
They were startled at Wallace’s fluency in the language of scholars. He saw this; it made him angrier still. “Or in French if you prefer!” he went on. “Certainment, c’est vrai! Ask your king to his face, and see if his eyes can convince you of the truth!”
She stared for a long moment at Wallace’s eyes.
“Hamilton, leave us,” Isabella said.
“M’lady—” Hamilton began.
“Leave us now,” she ordered.
He reluctantly obeyed. He saw that she wanted the exchange to be private, and Wallace turned and nodded for his men to leave.
Stephen, who had been admiring the lady’s beauty nonstop, leaned in and whispered to William, “Her husband’s more of a queen than she is. Did you know that ?” Without waiting for an answer, Stephen moved off with Hamish and Campbell.
The princess gestured to her handmaiden, and Nicolette, eyebrows lifted high in surprise, floated past Wallace, glancing back to appraise the view of him from behind and darting one last look at Isabella before moving out to stand beside the French guards by the carriage.
Wallace and the princess were left alone.
She spoke quickly as if anxious to settle their business and end the meeting. “Let us talk plainly. You invade England. You have it within your power to cause great suffering and death. But you cannot complete the conquest, and I perceive you are clever enough to know that. Yes, you have been victorious close to your shelter and supply. But the deeper you go into England, the harder your task will be.”
Wallace broke in. “We will bear the hardships to make our country free. English rule ensures our deprivation.”
She forced herself on, anxious not to deviate from the approach she had planned for herself. “The king proposes that you withdraw your attack. In return he grants you hereditary title, estates, and this chest with a thousand pounds of gold, which I am to pay to you personally.”
“A lordship. And gold. That I should become Judas.”
“Peace is made in such way.”
“Slaves are made in such ways!” The sudden passion of his outburst startled everyone:” the princess, those watching from outside the tent, and even, so it seemed, Wallace himself, for he turned away from her sharply and struggled to control the emotions that had leaped from him.
Isabella gripped the handles of her regal chair. Her eyes were wide as a doe’s and fixed on this man who stood before her in all his power and all his pain, and she understood exactly what had caused it all. She said something in a voice so soft that not even Hamilton, standing the closest to the tent opening and straining to hear, could make it out; the only one who heard was Wallace. What she said was, “I understand you have suffered. I know… about your woman.”
And Wallace said back to her, just as softly, “She was my wife. We married in secret because I would not share her with an English lord. They killed her to get to me.” He did not even turn his face to her, and get to me.” He did not even turn his face to her, and yet she was breathless in the certainty that everything he said was true. “I’ve never spoken of her,” he went on. “I don’t know why I tell you now. Except you remind me of her.”