William Wallace And His Scotland

a novella

Friends and neighbors! It is the ancient duty of all storytellers in the Celtic world to sing the praise of heroes. And as I wish to cast myself in the classic mold, I took the notion once of offering you folks the tale of Scotland's greatest hero, thinking that I should recount for you the life of Scotland's founding father, to illustrate the deeds and character of one who led a nation at its birth; the famous William Wallace.

But I must ask a question of you to begin: Do you believe the spirits of the dead are still alive somewhere? That we may speak with them in prayer? I tell you this: When I first took this notion, I straightway sat me down in a certain place and closed my eyes and called the hero's name. At once, before my startled eyes, the veil between the worlds was parted. Suddenly I found myself stood on a hill of moss and heather, silver mist about. And stood before me was a man, a great large man, extremely tall and muscular, powerful but with his eyes cast down in sadness and very weary.

So I sez to him, most politely, "Sir William, will it please thee if I tell thy tale?" And he sez no. With a single piercing glance he makes it clear to me as water; I must tell his people's tale. So sez he. So be it!

In the year of 1274 the land called Scotland was a land of plenty. In 1274 a good king was making peace; good weather made the sheep and cattle and barley fat and the pasturage grown green. Good winds wafted fully loaded ships back and forth to Europe. Market towns and harbor cities were growing, gaining royal charters. Ships were built in Inverness for owners everywhere and the councilors of Berwick called their town "Alexandria of the north". Rivers were bridged and new roads carried their own fleets of wagons and carts. Tanners and coopers and smiths and weavers and suchlike prospered. Farmers prospered too. Marshes were drained, fields that had been wood were cleared and plowed. And everywhere in Scotland countless multitudes of fat strong babies saw the light of day.

And one of those babes of this golden year of 1274, in the southwest of the country, in Ayrshire -- Ayrshire, lovely valley of the lovely river Ayr, secret refuge (so the wise do say) of Merlin, foster home to ancient Arthur, famous now as home to Robert Bruce the Mighty and Bobby Burns of the blessed pen -- one of these babes in lovely green and fertile Ayrshire was baptized William Wallace, praise the name. He was born as second son of a goodly knight, grandson of another such, whose family owned two thriving farms, and birthed into a happy mother's arms which scarce could hold the big squirming, active infant in their tender kind embrace.

But -- but -- in this dark foreboding year of 1274, this cursed fatal year, one king of England died and another took the power there. And this new king of England was a cruel, hungry, brutal man who would not rest. So, by the year of 1294 when Wallace was a man of twenty grown into his manly power, by 1294 Scotland stood in ruins.

I said before "He led the nation at its birth" and yet before him there was king and government in Scotland. The hills and vales and waters and isles were there before, but truth be told, there was no Scottish nation. The kingdom was the ancient Celtic kind where the lesser kings and chiefs of a land would meet and choose a single individual to lead in certain affairs between them. This high king of the Celtic sort would be a peacemaker among them and their chief justice and chief law maker but there was often war still among the chiefs and clans, no loyalty between them. Certainly the folk had more the sense of being separate clans and classes and races than they had of being all together Scots. Such was their tradition.

And so when good King Alexander rode off of the cliffs at Forth amid the raging midnight darkness of a springtime gale, when Wallace lay abed as a school boy of twelve -- for the good king was rushing home to bed beside his new sweet young and lovely bride, to make mayhaps a proper heir at last, so he was heedless of the dark tempestuous night -- when Alexander rode his steed off of the cliffs at Forth onto the rocks beside the sea, Scotland would stand thereafter with no crowned head. For six long years thereafter, the crown of Scots lay on no human brow, by the King of England's machinations and by her own disunity.

Oh, Alexander had one living heir, a little sickly lass, child of his daughter who had gone to be the Queen of Norway and who died too soon. And the great men of Scotland clung to this distant little babe in desperate hopes of peace. The great men gathered in a conclave when the king's broken corpse was laid into the ground and swore allegiance to this little Margaret, Maid of Norway. They appointed six of themselves to rule until some day when she might come and wear the crown. But all of that was hope in vain.

Meanwhile amid these hopes for peace, various men were setting up as royal candidates. There was a Bruce candidate for Scotland's crown, of course, and one from the Balliols. There was a Dutch count and an English duke, cousins of the royal line, and various others. The Seven Earls of Scotland, who were the royal electors by old law, they could not agree. The vile English Edward, he pretended through those years to be impartial and he put himself to be a fair disinterested arbiter while secretly through all that time he twined a twisting web of threats and promises to one earl and the next to keep them far apart. Edward Longshanks was a cruel and cunning man. While earls bickered and the ruling council fell apart, the folk of Scotland drifted into lawlessness. Tis sad to say that little Margaret, like her blessed mother, died. And that was the start of Scotland's misery.

Wallace a school boy? Tis odd, I know, to see the mighty warrior as a child -- a great mighty child no doubt -- folded up behind a desk and scribbling with a pen. Tis odd but tis a fact. A fine scholar he was and eager for the books. The parents thought he'd make a prelate of the church some day. He was a good scholar and benefited from it as a man and was ever grateful for the learning too. In that later miraculous year when he was twenty-four and ruled the land, he'd scratch out diplomatic correspondence with his own hand, in Latin you know, letters to foreign rulers. And then after fatal Falkirk, in his secret travels on the Continent, on his secret missions seeking aid for Scotland, you should have seen him in the private councils with the King of France, the King of Sweden, with the cardinals of the Pope. You should have seen him! He would argue quotes from Cicero and Aristotle. And too he learned a muckle bit of soldiering -- of generalship, you know -- from old Caesar's book. A wonder he was!

But still, the richest treasure that this pupil won was not from Caesar nor from Aristotle nor all that lot together, but from his own humble school master, Parson of Dunipace. His uncle, see, parson of the town of Dunipace that run that school for boys where the parents put him. This was a good man and a brave one too, as would be later proven in a worthy cause, and he used to set his boys some little Latin jingles of his own devising. There was one little jingling precept which the mighty Wallace quoted all his days to one and all, that shone in William's heart quite like a crystal jewel:

Dico tibi verum, libertas optima rerum;
Nunquam servili sub nexu vivito, fili.

My son, I tell thee soothfastlie,
No gift is like to libertie;
So never live in slavery.

Picture him thus: dark of night, thickest tangle of the ancient wood, a tiny fire with loved companions huddled close. Perchance there's strong Tom Halliday and trusty Edward Little, pious John Blair, perhaps another one or two or yet five hundred more camped round about, or yet no more at all, and all lain down in weariness on moss and stones. There is some meat and drink passed round. There is pain and blood. Many enemies were slain this day and several friends. And Wallace there among the rest, he smiles a tender melancholy smile and brings to mind the good school master of younger days and whispers once again those lines:

No gift is like to libertie;
So never live in slavery.

Well, what were they fighting for and how did they begin?

Edward Longshanks, King of England, declared himself the lord of Scotland too and cozened the Scottish nobles and the government to accept that claim as if by natural right. This when William Wallace was sixteen and seventeen in age. You see, by then the nobles and the ruling council too were begging Edward to decide who should be Scottish king. The chaos Edward sowed he now was reaping, for the country was collapsing into tribal war with little armies clashing more and more. And in return for his impartial wisdom, Edward demanded utter submission! A clever man was he! He had conquered Wales already and subdued Ireland too. Too clever was he by half.

Edward called a court of law, a hundred judges from both realms to hear all of the candidates' pleas and then those judges set to cogitating. Meanwhile, he extracted from every candidate an oath that kings of England would be overlords of Scotland too thenceforth forever. Too, spoke that awful oath, just temporary while the case at law was pending, every fortess in the Scottish realm must be handed up to English troops.

So, the hundred judges cogitated for a year and more while Scotland fell under occupation of the foreign soldiery. Well, the high nobles might accept these clever gambits but the Scottish people, never.

The Wallace family fled their Ayrshire home when English troops came in. These Wallace's were Cimric stock, Scotland's eldest living race, the folk of old Merlin and Arthur, and they did prize their heritage. They would be enemies of any who tried to take that land without the right. And the English had a way to know their enemies. First the English went about with a submission oath which every prominent man must sign. Though hundreds signed, the Wallace knights did not. So they were liable then to all the tortures and confiscations that could legally punish treason.

The Wallace men fled north from Ayrshire to Kilspindie, a little country place by Dundee, to some like-minded kinfolk there. The men armed themselves and their followers and forted at a farm. Lady Wallace and the other womenfolk, they settled in the town. Young William, now seventeen by age, they placed in a new school thereabouts, a seminary, started him in college we should say, in hailing distance of the ladies and the farm alike. But the English army found Kilspindie too. Suddenly in one afternoon, in a skirmish with an English troop, William's grandfather (on his mother's side) and his father and his elder brother and some uncles and cousins and their employees all fell to the blade. In a single day. There is a story of William's father, old Sir Malcolm Wallace, with the hamstrings of his legs both cut, fallen to his knees still fighting.

Well, the English constable of Dundee castle, master of those troops, he had a son and that son was a hateful spiteful youth, very free about the town at robbery and rape. William Wallace, seventeen, boiling in the wrath of grief, donned a gorgeous suit he had of springtime green, and dainty shoes, and gaily feathered hat, and stuck an heirloom dagger that he had into his belt, a dagger wrought with antique gold in cunning pattern on the hilt. So handsomely arrayed, our William took himself to Dundee town and there he shoved a way into the gang of toughs out in the street about the noble ruffian. William shoved into that crowd, there to stand in silence. There he stood before this noble villain ass, son of a villain. The fool spoke up. The fool declared: no stinking Scot had any right to such a suit of clothes. No word or gesture from the grimly towering one. The fool spoke once again that no savage lout had any right to such a jewel at this that shone so bright at William's belt. The fool demanded William's dagger. So William seized him by the collar of the velvet shirt and gave the dagger to him in the heart.

So William was an outlaw for his honor and revenge. The truth be told, he hated English after then and slew them at every turn. He killed every English that he could, saving only women, children and their clergy. You may well ask: What fine philosophy is this, to kill or die for honor and revenge? You may well ask: What hero have we here that just avenges his own wrongs? A hero true? A hero true -- would he not? -- should look beyond mere right and wrong of one on one, mere blood for blood. Should he not? A proper hero gazes to the future, into deeper mysteries of right and wrong, into the legacy we ought to leave by having lived. What sort of hero is this William Wallace then, this man of gory violence?

Would that you could ask his comrades that. Would that you could see his comrades' faces when he preached to them of right and wrong. Of liberty and slavery. Of their nation. The outrage of the Wallace men was done again and again to others, countless times. The country was being robbed and raped. And the country's laws and government did nothing. Men of courage were helpless and they longed for understanding of the thing as much as for revenge. Wallace gave them understanding and revenge.

Would that you could hear him preach of Scotland! I cannot do it justice. He used to say to them that Scotland had been a land of strong folk since Noah's flood. There were stories then, you know, about the different races coming to the country, many tales. His message, simply put, was that the land had shaped all of these folk. There was a holy Soul of Scotland which made men love their families, made women true, made everyone willing to fight for right. To put it plain, he preached the highest ideals of a harsh frontier land. (I cannot do it justice.) And now invaders from the south came in defiling all of that. He said that it was time the Scots unite. He said all this with love and hatred both deep in his heart.

That time, that first time when he slew a human being, he found himself confronted then with half a dozen of the dead man's friends and fought a way loose. He towered head and shoulders over them and he came down on another one with that fancy dagger, very smart-like. It was a busy street and there is no doubt that some true Scots crowding there about prevented others of that nasty band from drawing blades. Some Scots cleared a way for the hearty lad's escape.

Now this was Dundee town where his mother and the grieving womenfolk were lodged and a lady friend of theirs dwelt there down an alley off of that same street. Wallace made for this good woman's house and she hid him in a corner, with female dress stretched round his towering frame, hunched down on a little stool behind a spinning wheel, carding wool industriously. English soldiers stormed right through, right up and down the town, through that very house and room, but found him not. The lady gave a sword and later, near on dusk, Wallace got away, killing two of the foreign soldiers at the city gate.

Now, Wallace had a tiny mite of soldierly experience even then, as any good knight's son should have. Part of his proper schooling was the handling of arms, part and parcel of a lad's athletics. And one summer when he was fourteen his family's laird called out the district -- to support the government against one of the other clans, you know -- and William went along and lived in camp as soldier servant to his father and his brother. But there was no fighting that time. He did know the countryside quite well for he used to tramp far across those hills with chums, being such a big athletic boy, and they went armed and set themselves to military games as boys will do. And many were the times he took a pole and line and book and tramped alone out to a certain pool where the sun was warm and fishing good. Many were the times. Seeing even then his country's plight, he'd closely studied an old worn copy of Caesar's War Commentaries from his teacher. But still, when he murdered that awful sod in Dundee town he had no notion that a mere three dozen months would make him Scotland's savior.

Now we shall take as typical of incidents befalling many Scots, what befell our young brave next. After that affair in Dundee's street he did not take to the woods and hills at once. A few bribes here and there, a friendly judge, some time of lying low, and even such a homicide might be set straight. But there came two more incidents to set him definitely upon the life of banditry and these were the kind of things befalling many Scots.

After the Dundee deed was done, he went away to stay with an old blind crippled knight that was a family friend in Riccarton. The good old fellow promised William a safe and quiet place to hide. But one day soon he went out to the brook with a fishing pole to get their dinner. When a little basket full of fish was had and he was set to go, four English soldiers happened by. The soldiers wanted all the fish, of course, and though he reasoned with them there at first, three of them soon lay dead.

So then our young lion fled from Riccarton to Irvine where a distant uncle held hereditary office as the sheriff. Now, this gentleman was a man of heartfelt peace and he was wont to keep the peace despite all these outrages. Nonetheless he did admire those acts of rash and daring courage. The youth was family to him after all, had fought for the family's justice. And though the gentleman's hereditary office as the sheriff scarcely meant a thing by now, still it might mean something. He might be able somewise to protect this nephew. So he too promised a hiding place, if God should will it. He even named William captain of his household guard. But, it seems, God was willing something else entirely.

There soon came a day when the gentleman was moving house from one farm to another and much of his household rode out on the road. It happened then that William Wallace took two other braves to lead a string of their master's horses down a shorter path across a forest hill and the gentleman's favorite war mount trotting there among them. Then, on that narrow winding wooded path they overtook a squad of foreign soldiery and these English were heavy laden with booty taxed from some dead man's estate. The heavy laden animals were weary with their bulging packs. With weapons drawn, the invaders forced the three young hardies to give their master's horses over, including this the sheriff's finest mount, and take the jaded beasts instead. Again Wallace tried to reason and yet again, talk did not suffice. By that day's end, the sheriff had his good beasts back, the English were all dead, and three young men rode off into night with all that loot, all of the soldiers' horses and weapons.

Thus began three years when Wallace dwelt in wilderness exile, a bandit first and then a rebel chief.

Well, I have omitted grand affairs of state that passed while our obscure William Wallace went to outlawry, some grand doings by grand men. I've mentioned how Edward Longshanks, King of England, conqueror of Wales and scourge of Ireland, by legal tricks and bribes and bullying had cozened the nobles and government of Scotland to let him choose their king. To be precise and careful in the tale, Edward called five score of judges to bestow the crown. These judges thought and fussed for months then begged for his advice. He had secured from every royal candidate a solemn warrant that England's monarchs would forever over-rule the lord of Scotland. He had secured from Scotland's government and nobles a blessing to establish his own army in every corner of the land and he was quickly doing so. He had also, though I warrant he was too clever to know or care, aroused the Scottish common folk.

Edward named John Balliol to be the King of Scots. This John was a strong fellow of good intelligence, scion of a wealthy house who did enjoy the pleasures of his wealth. He had luxuriously lounged at Edward's court for several years and followed forth to various wars. Truth be told, John Balliol regarded Edward as his lord because the Balliols held broad estates in England too. Long before, a Balliol knight had come from Normandy with Bastard Bill and helped to conquer England, and thereby got up as a noble there. One of the family's heirs was later married to a Scottish house to gain a great increase of lands and titles in the north. Many Norman families came to Scotland peaceably thus. Later, in the generation just before the time of Alexander, a sister of a Scottish king was wedded to a Balliol so thus there was bequeathed on John a legal claim to royalty. And so, you see, this fellow John seemed like a piece of luck for Longshanks. He might well call this fellow king and gain a willing tool. But things fell differently from that.

This King John Balliol was the selfsame one that Scots now one and all have called Toom Tabbard, the empty shirt. King Empty Shirt. And rightly too for he gained that name quite amply by his later life of total obscure inaction. But he did seem a fighting man at first. No sooner was he crowned in solemn ancient rite, seated on the holy Stone of Destiny at Scone, no sooner was he crowned than he sent emissaries off to France to get a secret pact of war on Edward. The French were Edward's enemies because, of course, he'd tried one time for conquest there as well. No sooner this alliance sealed than King John Balliol sent a letter off to Edward to renounce all of his myriad submissive oaths. John demanded that the English army be removed. John set up the war flag of the King Of Scots and summoned out the nation's host. As you might suppose, for this longtime lounging lackey, for this dubious leader of a fragmented land, few Scottish warriors came.

That was a small brief war but full of horrors. The first thing that the wrathful Edward did, he brought an army and armada north and laid waste to Berwick city. Berwick, largest city in the land, thriving seaport to the world, most of it burnt and leveled. Twenty thousand people, more or less, hacked to death and dumped into the sea. The Comyn clan's fighting men, as their revenge, descended on Northumberland in England, where they pillaged, raped and murdered for a ruthless fortnight. A few weeks passed and the one large force under John's command was caught and slaughtered on some tidal flats beside the sea by a larger force of Edward's. That closed the matter.

King John Balliol was required by Edward to undergo a variety of ceremonies where he begged forgiveness and forswore his treachery and offered to resign as King. At one of these farce rituals the royal insignia was ripped right off his chest and yet Edward did not say the man deposed. Edward left it open then whether John is King of Scots or no; one more cause of chaos and disunion. John dragged through the following years as a guarded prisoner in London till eventually he was exiled to France. King John Balliol, Toom Tabbard. Grand doings of grand men. And Scotland full of foreign soldiers thick as fleas.

But enough of that for now. Enough of cruel futility and brutality that goes for naught! Let's speak of Wallace and of love. Aye, fierce William Wallace; his heart made love to woman's flesh indeed. So after all, William would have made no decent Catholic priest. And I must say the love between that violent man and two certain women on two occasions was the salvation of a desperate man, salvation of his soul and body.

The first of these two times was in the summer Wallace was nineteen, when he had been in the field for just one year. Though his fame was growing his heart turned bitter, cold as any stone. He was a killer and a thief. His band -- as friends and relatives came and went, as they passed on to the immortal lands, sometimes his band was two or three, sometimes himself alone but sometimes twenty men -- his band was reckless and savage. It was a favorite game of theirs to walk about a town in daylight and then return by night to kill and rob. When the English pursued with too many men for them to slay outright, they'd flee one district for another, fighting a way out gallantly. So then with the land in summer once again, after months of that, they found themselves near Perth.

As fate would have it, an older woman of Wallace's acquaintance was living then in Perth. This good woman was the very nurse who tended him and suckled him as a babe and, hearing this, he went to visit in the town. To his surprise, for he had no thought of it, he found the lady's two daughters were now grown to womanhood and handsome too. One of these daughters was married with a babe her own but the other was unwedded still and she bespoke him gently. She spoke most tenderly to fierce Wallace and his heart then melted in his breast.

What relations these two had I do not know, for he never told, but he came to see her in the town one time too often. The English governor in Perth had a certain spy who knew the bandit's face. That spy noted the great tall man about town and set to have a closer look. So then one evening as our hero left his mistress' door, all softly pensive unaware, the English seized him. They locked him up -- awaiting trial, they said -- in the foulest stinking dungeon that their castle had. To finish him, they fed him naught but rotten fish and dirty water. Three weeks of that. And then one day, as they desired, the jailer found him dead. Or so he seemed for all the world. Eight men it took to haul away the lifeless corpse and throw it on the castle dung heap.

News went out that William Wallace had expired. The old nurse and her daughters came to beg the English for the giant's body. In this -- so everyone might see him dead -- the governor relented. Then in their home while the women washed the corpse for burial, while they laved the crusted filth from off his face, they saw the eyelids flutter. His fingers twitched. They felt a mite of warmth about him. So these three gave him life again. In strictest secrecy they tended him. The old nurse made him potions as she had done the child before. Her daughter with the baby suckled him and the other woke his heart with tender touch and kisses.

Have you ever heard the fame of a Scot by name Sir Thomas Rhymer? He was a famous psychic mystic poet, a prophet in that time who issued many true predictions. Not only human, but a prince among the Fairies too he was. Over eighty then this fellow was, and fate brought him to Perth as well.

When Thomas Rhymer got the news of Wallace's demise, a trance had come upon the seer and he wept. Then later when the news came out of Wallace wondrously in health, again the trance descended. There were declaimed poetic lines to prophesy the hero's great success. The Rhymer himself, aged human Fairy prince, declared that Wallace would lead the Scots to liberty. News of this went out at once and it came back to Wallace at the moment he was standing at a stable door with reins in hand to mount and ride away. Scarce might one imagine how the Rhymer's words, repeated to him there, must remold and steel that man like the striking of a thunder clap. He too must weep in wonderment. Thus, fate and woman's love had saved him in that nineteenth year. He was become a new man with a new heart in his breast.

So thus he was become a soldier true. Men came to him in greater numbers now and he put them to much better use. One amazing night there was when the Wallace band, fifty strong and all a-horse, were pelting over a moonlit moor with an English force four times their size in hot pursuit, making for a distant nest of rocks where they might fort up to advantage. Suddenly upon that moonlit moor, quite unexpected, they came upon two other galloping bands of fighting men, bands that had been in the field awhile as well and now had come from far as one to join with Wallace. Amazing chance. They did join him instantly and Wallace took command of this battalion instantly and made that moor into a proper battlefield of cavalry, with wheel about, one company to the enemy rear and all of that. The English had gathered that night's force from far and wide especially for that pursuit so in this single unexpected battle the crude army of volunteers smashed the English forces of a county. Amazing. It seemed the Rhymer must be right.

They took to plundering castles too. Small castles, to be sure, and they only played these tricks where guile would grant assistance. They laid no sieges, you may be sure. But once they started taking fortresses, there was no stop to them. You see, of course, that's where the enemy kept supplies and weapons and horses and money. Everything the little army needed to survive they now could take. And it was a whopping propaganda too, when townsfolk woke to a morning with the English soldiers vanished, then go and find a rebel captain in the local castle. Of course they had no need to hold these places more than a week or two.

Oh, but I should apologize. I have digressed. Before, I said that Wallace was saved by woman's love on two occasions, and yet I did not tell you of his wedded wife, his sweetheart true, his dear beloved.

She was a little mite, tiny by him, no bigger than his thumb you'd say to see them side by side. There burned a secret fierceness in her. None could know her mind except her close companions; to the world she showed a meekness, modesty, and patience. She was eighteen when Wallace was twenty, in his third year in the field. She was the last surviving heir of good estates near Lanark. She was the family's sole surviving heir because the English commander in Lanarkshire had executed her father and brother, getting false convictions of them for a nonexistent crime. And now this governor pressed her and cajoled her toward a marriage with his son, to gain her land. It seemed a fearsome plot to which a meek and modest girl might easily fall prey. But it was not so, not for a moment. When Wallace came to Lanarkshire she sent a secret letter and rode to meet him at her farm, a council of war. She there demanded ways that she and trusty people of the district could aid the cause. They fell in love at once.

Marion Braidfute was this woman's name. She became, at first, one of the army's spies. You see, that English commander's son would come to woo her and impress her with talk of grand doings. She let the fool kiss her cheek and touch her knee and led him on to whisper military secrets. But then one time she like to bit his tongue clean off and after that he was less keen. Anger flamed in the young man for that, but still he scarcely could believe that such a mouse would be deceiving him.

Marion came soon to lie with Wallace. Oh, he was most reluctant at first. The three good women in Perth had suffered ill for aiding him, you may well know, and he did not will to cause again such suffering for one he deeply loved. Nor did he wish to make a widow of her. But she demanded a place in his army and she demanded a place in his bed. Presently he asked his friends. Considering all, they did advise a marriage. Marriage it would be, for good and ill. For good because she got with child. For ill as you will see.

He left her there in Lanark to lead his soldiers southward once again. Their wedding was a secret and she hid the pregnancy but rumors did abound. When their child was born at last there was no hiding anymore. It was a fine, robust and beaming girl. The proud strong mother took the babe to be baptized right in the church in town. There she declared the father for all to hear. Twas William Wallace and he was her lawful spouse. She had two stout servants by but these men were no warriors. As our brave Marion walked out through the church's nave with the girl child in her arms, a hooded figure leapt out of the shadows, plunged a dagger in the valiant woman's heart and fled.

The shocking news of love turned into dust so soon might well have driven William mad, except they took the newborn child to him at once. Marion's bosom confidant and friend, a waiting maid she had, brought the baby quickly down to Ayrshire where his army camped. There this lady counseled him most earnestly. She brought a message too, a message that his love had trusted to her care the night before the awful crime. None but spirits now can tell us what that message said, but when he heard his sweetheart's parting words, Wallace lifted up the infant girl and kissed the tiny face repeatedly and laughed and wept.

Oh, our story's almost done. Yes, almost done. There's several years remaining but little to be said. Wallace never did go mad; all testify to that. Somehow as his fame and power grew, he grew more sane and sure. It was the child, I think; having that pretty one his own and knowing as a parent knows that we must leave the world to them. He set the girl up to be raised in safety on her mother's farm, raised up by her mother's trusted friends. All through the several coming years he often visited to lavish well a father's tender love. The baby grew into a worthy girl and then a woman fine as ever was. In time she wedded one of William's trusty men, in that good fellow's middle age, and thus got babies of her own.

At that time all else seemed aright, though we may see within the bitter sorrow of one good woman's death foreshadowing of more. In those months William led his little army with impunity wherever one might wish. That voluntary force of common men now swept the royal enemy before them like a gale-blown ship. The English army fled from point to point, to ever weaker strongholds. And Scottish lords now came to William for the first time too. Lords who had opposed the English all along now saw a mighty leader rearing up a mighty head. Those who'd bedded the invaders saw the error of their ways, among them Robert Bruce. The Bruces fought for Edward constantly, but Robert came to look on William now quite like a god. Who could have known that William's mortal years would be so few?

The English occupying forces were exhausted now. Wallace took his men all round the Highlands in one gallant summer, chasing occupiers forth and stirring up the nation's soul. By winter only the Lowlands stayed in English hands. So when next springtime came, Edward Longshanks sent a fresh big army north. The Scots, now a multitude well disciplined and drilled with confidence and patriotic passion, stopped these new invaders at the famous Stirling Bridge. The pride of English chivalry there crashed upon the steady ranks that Julius Caesar taught him. The haughty pride of noble armored cavalry was lain down in the bloody stream at Sterling Bridge. And then they chased the English from the Lowlands too. 'Twas Robert Bruce's hand that knighted William after that, for it was great embarrassment to noble men that William Wallace freed the land before he was a knight.

There was no government in Scotland anymore except the clans, and with the country now at peace a government was sorely needed, and yet their sometime king was locked a prisoner in London. William spoke up to declare himself a candidate for Guardian of the Realm, and when no other candidate appeared declared himself elected. The lords, with Bruce in lead, at once agreed. Eventually a partial parliament was mustered up and they affirmed. So William Wallace, age exactly twenty-four, then ruled the land.

He did a number of important things while Guardian of the Realm. One of the best was that he made a host of good appointments. Many offices had fallen vacant in the interregnum; magistrates, priors, so on, so forth, and thus the ways of peace were like to be forgotten. If swarms of greedy lawless men had got to office now, the edifice would surely crumble. But William sought out able men of brains and character and cared not if they were nobility or common. This aggravated nobles, I may tell you. Another thing they did not like; a military draft of the whole nation, for it undermined their little armies. Ah well, don't let these arguments becloud the soldier's works of peace. He wrote and signed a trade deal with the Dutch. He started work again upon the roads and harbors. And, most lasting, his appointments of a host of competent men would stand the country in good stead for a generation then to come.

There was no time, though, for a normal life to bloom. That year was golden but it quickly faded. That winter Wallace heard of preparations Longshanks had in hand for a return so Wallace invaded England. For a month his people occupied the north of England and they stripped it bare. Everything of use that could be moved they hauled away, especially the food and fodder. Wallace ordered parts of Lowland Scotland cleared as well; towns evacuated, all supplies away. So in that springtime when the English came, they starved.

He let them come as far as Falkirk. Now, Falkirk is a little town in a little valley leading thence into the uplands. If truth be told, Wallace did not want to fight that day but Longshanks trapped him in that valley. Wallace only had a portion of his force right there, for he had sent detachments out to guard the other paths. You see, Longshanks came upon him unawares that morning from a hard night's march. The English king was out of rations; he must either fall back on his ships that very day or steal a march in desperation.

Still, Wallace had the time to choose the battleground and he chose well, arrayed his men to face the enemy across a bog, on an upward slope with forest at their back. And they formed up the way he'd taught to thwart the haughty armored cavalry, for now they formed in rings of close-packed men afoot, bristling twelve-foot pikes. This same tactic that he taught was quickly used by other common men to drive the noble French from Switzerland. This is essentially the discipline that won the day at Waterloo and countless other fields for centuries after Falkirk. But on that day the Scotsmen were too few. The army Longshanks mustered for this job was huge. He brought in French battalions, Irish, Welsh, companies from every English county. It was a hard, hard, bitter day. The common Scotsmen butchered noble cavalry en mass but they were ground to nothing finally just by numbers. When it was done, to spare his people suffering for his lone sake, Wallace fled the country.

The fighting he now left to others such as Robert Bruce. There was plenty more, a generation more of war, till Longshanks died of old age in his bed in his own house. Then still more fighting till Longshanks' son was buried too. Scholars now call these the Wars of Independence.

Wallace now became a fugitive ambassador, legate from whatever Scots were fighting to whomever might give help. He went to every European prince who'd ever been an enemy of Edward. Messages came and went through Norway. Five years of that. At last there was a certain duke in France, supposedly a friend, who seized him and his little party. There were diplomatic letters on his person that proved his so-called treason toward the King of England. That villain sold him with the evidence to Longshanks and thereby came the end at last; false charges, false trial and false conviction. Dismembered portions of his mighty corpse were hung up on display in places round the land.

Well, what to tell you now? Robert Bruce, after sore and desperate tribulation, reigned as King of Scots. He even reigned a little while in peace.

And what then of the common folk who were so noble? In Dunipace the good old parson fell in a fight one time against some English soldier rogues who robbed the parish fund to benefit the poor. Yet he survived to ancient age and schooled a lot more boys with all his rhymes of liberty. Pious John Blair, William's school days chum that fought beside him all the way and was the chaplain to his band, this John Blair made a parish priest as well. In later days he wrote a book about the hero's deeds, a book which scholars yet today must study. William's first fair lady friend, the nurse's daughter, she did pretty well. She had three husbands, each one richer than the one before. She dried her tears and finally owned a thriving business in the weaving trade. I've spoken of the hero's daughter, her descendants good Scots one and all.

So what else can we say? William Wallace was a true great man.