He knew they would – and if they had to do it over his body, then it was no more than he had done over others. It does not matter if I fall as long as someone else picks up my sword and keeps fighting.
He climbed unsteadily to his feet, though there was no-one to see. Better to die standing than live on your knees.
London
The Vigil of St Bartholomew, August, 1305
The great pillared aisles sweated with those craning to see, genuinely curious even if many had only come because the King wished it. They watched him, sitting in state, in ermine and gold circlet, one hand stroking his curled silver beard, the drooping eye like a sly, winsome invite to the giant who stood alone and overloaded with chains on the top step of Westminster.
The great and the good, crusted with finery and stiff in their curule chairs, stared back at Wallace with fish eyes while le Blound, Mayor of London, cleared his throat and read the indictment, uncurling the considerable roll of it as he did so.
‘… trial at Westminster before Johannes de Segrave, P. Maluree, R. de Sandwich, Johannes de Bakewell, and Jean le Blound, Mayor of the Royal City of London, on the vigil of St Bartholomew, in the thirty-third year of the reign of King Edward, son of Henry …’
Bruce watched Segrave, who had brought Wallace to London in an overloading of chains and would take away the pieces of him afterwards – and be handed a purse of silver for his expenses.
Bruce wondered if there were thirty pieces in it, which would be in keeping with the mummery of the affair – he looked at the figure on the steps, sagging with exhaustion, dripping with shackles and crowned with a wreath. Oak, to signify that he was king of brigands and had dared try and usurp the rule of Scotland from King Edward.
A poor decision, he thought to himself. Edward has made a mistake and one which will rebound on me, too, for that oak wreath gave Will the air of Christ himself, bound and scourged and crowned with thorns – and this day might be dedicated to St Bartholomew, but it was also the Feast of St Longinus, the defiant soldier who had thrust a spear into Christ’s side for mercy and was later martyred as a Christian.
A Christ-like Wallace did not bode well and Bruce, even as he marvelled at the strength still left in Will, frowned at the thought of him as a martyr in the name of King John Balliol.
Treason, murder, robbery, incendiarism, the felonious slaying of William de Heselrig, Sheriff of Lanark … the long litany of it rolled on, interrupted only once, when Will raised the bruise of his face.
‘Treason?’ he thundered back, taking everyone by surprise with the power in his voice. ‘I never swore to you, Longshanks. John Balliol is my king. Treason there never was.’
Mayhap – the wee legals could argue the finer points of it until Judgement Day. Yet there is enough, Bruce thought, in all the rest.
‘… and after this, joining to himself as great a number of armed men as he could, he attacked the houses, towns and castles of that land, and caused his writs to run through the whole of Scotland as if they were the edicts of the overlord of that land … and he invaded the Kingdom of England and especially the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland, and all whom he found there loyal to the King of England he feloniously slew in different ways … and he spared no-one who spoke the English tongue, but slew all in ways too terrible to be imagined, old and young, brides and widows, babes and their mothers …’
Edward, brooding as a raven waiting for a sheep to die, listened to the meticulous detail of it all, thinking only of the one felony which remained unmentioned and never would be, though the single eye of that ruby Apostle glinted balefully in front of the King every day.
By God’s Holy Arse, this Wallace had contrived to reach out from the north and rob him in his own treasury – the sly, ingenuous term ‘brought unease to the King’ was a shouted laugh of understatement.
Wallace said nothing more in answer to any of the charges, which brought a deal of cold satisfaction to Edward. Did he think a legal wriggling off the hook of treason would save him?
Bruce sat and looked at the stone face of Wallace, his thought racing like wild horses. He once vowed to march on London, Bruce recalled, so this was a sour jest by God on the man – the best view of Edward’s capital, elevated above all of London, was hanging where the crows circle the gate spikes.