Finding Fraser(105)

The piece was in the Entertainment section of the Daily Scotsman. Apparently they had been running sneak peeks for a week or so. This issue held an excerpt, an interview with Jack and a rave review noting that the new book had bumped Ian Rankin’s latest thriller out of the number one spot on the bestseller list.

After the reception he’d received on that morning show, I didn’t doubt it. The three articles, along with an ad for Irn-Bru, took up most of the lower half of the page. The interview focused on the political implications of writing a book about a Scottish hero at a time when popular opinion in the country was surging toward independence from Westminster.

The excerpt, on the other hand, looked like Mrs. McCarthy from Edinburgh had picked it out. It was a love scene, depicting Wallace’s last night with his wife sometime before leaving to fight at Stirling Bridge. It was the steamiest thing I had ever read, apart from my favorite scene with Claire and Jamie in the hot springs. And I found it interesting that Wallace’s wife was no red-head, but had “wheaten” curls and hazel eyes. She had a decent grasp of the dire political position her husband was in, too. I’d never read a love scene with quite so much intellectual foreplay. It was—thought provoking. And hot.

Which made me smile.

“Lovely piece o’ writin’, aye?” said the lady with the knitting needles as I put the paper down. I nodded, still caught up in the scene Jack had woven.

“I pre-ordered the book at Waterstones,” she said from under a cloud of pale blue wool. “Been a fan o’ his work fer years, but the man has really stepped up his game wi’ this one.”

With the clicking needles, her warm smile and the tight brown curls around her head, I was reminded of a pre-alcohol Genesie.

The thought of Genesie actually made me laugh out loud.

“Oh—I was just remembering someone I met in New York,” I said in response to the woman’s questioning look. “Your knitting reminded me of her. She loves Braveheart.”

The knitting lady’s brows drew together, reminding me even more startlingly of Genesie. She folded her knitting into her lap.

“You Americans,” she said—quite scathingly, I thought—“Yeh allus get yer history wrong. Even the title o’ that fillum was wrong. The Braveheart was the Bruce, not Wallace. Robert the Bruce, tae be exact, another giant of a man who died years after William Wallace. He’d tasked his friend the Black Douglas to take his heart to the Holy Land, but they were set upon and the Douglas were kill-et. Before Douglas died, he threw the heart toward the east, calling upon it to carry on bravely. That American fillum got it entirely wrong.”

Having learned my lesson from Genesie and her knitting needles well, I sat quietly and nodded as the bus rocked side to side.

“And mind, I’m from Stirling, m’self, and I were there when that young movie star fella came to town to premiere the thing. You know he never stepped out of his big black car, not even the once? Kept them limousine windows dark as the devil’s arse, never mind all them folk around, waitin’ to see him, all who’d put their lives on hold while he filmed his movie.”

She made a noise in the back of her throat. “He tries to claim he’s Australian, yeh know, but the man is American through and through.”

She nodded her head at this pronouncement; as if this was the worst insult she could come up with. Rant over, she gathered up her needles and the wooly project she’d been working on. The bus wheezed and farted and as we slowed, she reached down for her knitting bag, her former placid expression completely restored.

“Where ever yer headed, ye’d do worse than to stop in Stirling for an hour and visit the shrine tae the Wallace,” she said, as I stood up. “It’ll gi’e yeh an education, if now’t else.”

So, that’s what I did.





A Fleeting Foray…

2:00 pm, Sept 1

Cathy’s Café, Stirling, Scotland



A brief pause in the journey——a final fleeting foray into the past, as prescribed by a wise woman I met earlier today.

A few thoughts on the best way to spend the last days of a journey:

Let spontaneity rule the day, as you never know what’s behind the next corner.

Look past the standard tourist fare and seek out locations where real people live their lives. Common ground can be found in the craziest places!

Listen——to any local willing to share a bit of their story. You will learn more than you think——and you will thank me.

And now I go to learn more of the Wallace, and his role in the shaping of the country.

About time, wouldn’t you say?