Braveheart Read Free

a jug of whiskey and used the wet finger to draw on the tabletop. “They have a camp here,” Malcolm said, looking from face to face. “We attack them at sunset tomorrow. Give us all night to run home.”
     
    The next day Malcolm and john saddled horses and led them from their barn; they were checking the short swords they had tucked into the grain sacks behind their saddles when William came out of the barn with his own horse.
    “William, you’re staying here, “ his father said.
    “I can fight,” William said.
    These words from his youngest son made Malcolm pause and kneel to look into William’s eyes.
    “Aye. But it's our wits that make us men. I love ya, boy. You stay.”
    Malcolm and John mounted their horses and rode away and left William watching them go. At the edge of their oat field they turned in their saddles and waved to him.
    William waved back and watched them until they disappeared on the curving trail up the valley.
     
     
    3
     
    THE PEACE OF THE SUMMER TWILIGHT HAD BEGUN TO SETtle over the Wallace farm. The wind whispered across the straw thatch of the rooftops, and the chickens scratched lazily around the barn. All was strangely quiet.
    Then William and this friend Hamish Campbell, redheaded like his father, ran from the rear of the house and ducked in beside the barn, breathless, gasping. The tow boy pressed their backs against the wall. William peered around a corner, then shrunk back and whispered, “They’re coming!”
    “How many?” Hamish shot back.
    “Three, maybe more!”
    “Armed?”
    “They’re English soldiers, ain’t they?” William demanded.
    “With your father and brother gone, they’ll kill us and burn the farm!”
    “It's up to us, Hamish!”
    Hamish leaned forward for a look, but William pulled him back and breathed hot words into his friend’s ear: “Not yet! Here he comes; be ready!”
    They waited heard heavy footsteps. Then from around the corner three enormous, ugly hogs appeared. The boys hurled rotten eggs. The eggs slapped the snouts of the pigs, who scattered as the boys charged, howling.
    The sun went down on their play. The boys walked toward the house, beneath a lavender sky. The house looked so much darker and emptier now. “Wanna stay with me tonight?” Hamish asked.
    “I wanna have supper waitin’,” William said.
    “We’ll get those English pigs tomorrow, “ Hamish said.
    “Aye, we’ll get ‘em,” William grinned.
     
    The sky had gone fully black and the stars were hard and bright above the house when William’s face appeared at the window and he looked toward the distant hills, where he saw trees and heather, but no sign of life. He turned back to the cook fire he had built in the grate and stirred at the stew he had made. He spooned up two steaming bowls full and set them out on the table.
    But he was only hoping. He looked out the window again; he was still all alone. So he left a candle burning on the table beside the stew and moved up the stairs.
     
    Night thawed into a foggy dawn, and William rose from his bed, where he had huddled, afraid to sleep, through a night that seemed to have no end. But now, with gray showing through the cracks of his broad windows, he rose, dressed, and moved down the hall. He stopped at the door of this father’s bedroom and saw the undisturbed bed. He moved on and passed the door of this brother’s room, also unrumpled.
    In the kitchen he found the two cold bowls of stew beside the exhausted candle. He spooned up his own cold porridge and ate alone.
    After his breakfast, William was in the barn loft, shoveling corn down to feed the hogs, when he glimpsed something coming. He saw an ox cart rumbling down the curving land. Its driver was Campbell, with MacClannough walking behind it. The farmers glanced up at William, their faces grim.
    From his perch in the loft, William saw what the neighbors had brought: the bodies of this father and brother. The car stopped; Campbell, with a bandage around his