Free Braveheart by Randall Wallace Page B

find William out in the moonlight.
    “Murron!”
    “Shhh!” she whispered, but he was already whispering.
    “Come with me.”
    “I don’t think my parents are asleep. They’ve been restless all night!”
    “So am I. So are you. Come with me.”
    She slipped out the window and into his arms and to the ground. They ran across the grass to the trees, where William had two horses tied.
    They rode, silhouettes along a ridge, as the horses’ breath blew silver clouds in the moonlight.
    He guided her to a grove and asked her to dismount. She followed him as he led both horses into the grove and found it open in the center—a thick ring of trees around a small grassy circle. He tied the horses to a branch, took her hand, and drew her to the far side of the circle. The trees there opened onto endless sky. A precipice! She drew back in surprise, then gasped at the beauty she saw. They were high above a loch, gleaming in the moonlight. She gripped his hand. They looked out upon together all of Scotland, the whole world below them. So beautiful, it was sacred.
    “You’ve been here before,” she said.
    He nodded. “Some nights, I have dreams. Mostly dreams I don’t want. I started riding at night to fill up my mind so that when I did sleep, I’d dream only of the ride and the adventure.”
    “Did it work? Did it stop you dreaming?”
    “No. You don’t choose your dreams. Your dreams choose you.”
    They sat down on the smooth rocks where the tree roots embraced the earth. The wind off the loch was steady and cold. Neither of them noticed it. Both seemed willing to sit there forever.
    “William,” she said, “I wondered so many times what had become of you. Where you had gone. What you were doing…” She looked out over the loch. They say no one can see the wind, but she could see it, moving over the surface of the water, making tracks where the windwaves caught the moonlight. “And if you would ever come back.”
    He nodded. “I’ve come back,” he whispered. No one could have heard them, there was no other soul for miles. But it was as if he had too much voice in his throat, and all he could do was whisper.
    “When you gave me the thistle. . . That you saved it. . . “ She couldn’t make her words come together into a whole sentence. “I understood then . . . You, too. You . . .had thought about me, too.”
    “Aye. Oh . . . aye.”
    “You’ve had learning. That uncle of yours, the one you went to live with—my father said he was an ecclesiastic. He must have taught you so many things.”
    William nodded.
    “I . . . I don’t even know how to read.”
    “You can learn. I can teach you.”
    She was silent for a moment, knowing he had just opened the door to the inner room of his life. “But, William you’ve been out into the bigger world. I’ve never been far from home. No farther than this spot right here, right now.”
    He stared off, beyond the distant mountains. “Murron, I’ve traveled in my body only as far as the home of my uncle Argyle and his shire. But he has shown my mind worlds I never dreamed of. I want to share those worlds with you.”
    He was looking at her now.
    She took his hands in hers. “William, there are scars on your hands. You’ve done more than study.”
    “Aye. I have fought. And I have hated. I know it is in me to hate and to kill. But I’ve learned something else away from my home. And that is that we must always have a home, somewhere inside us. I don’t know how to explain this to you, I wish I could. When I lost my father and john, it hurt my heart so much. I wished I had them back; I wished the pain would go away. I thought I might die of grief alone; I wanted to bring that grief to the people who had brought it to me.” His words were coming fast now. Slow to get started, they had become impossible to stop. “But later I came to realize something. My father and his father had not fought and died so I could become filled with hate. They fought for me to be