RANDAL remembered his father’s going to fight the English, and how he
came back again. It was a windy August evening when he went away: the
rain had fallen since morning. Randal had watched the white mists
driven by the gale down through the black pine-wood that covers the hill
opposite Fairnilee. The mist looked like armies of ghosts, he thought,
marching, marching through the pines, with their white flags flying and
streaming. Then the sun came out red at evening, and Randal’s father
rode away with all his men. He had a helmet on his head, and a great axe
hanging from his neck by a chain, and a spear in his hand. He was riding
his big horse, _Sir Hugh_, and he caught Randal up to the saddle and
kissed him many times before he clattered out of the courtyard. All the
tenants and men about the farm rode with him, all with spears and a flag
embroidered with a crest in gold. His mother watched them from the tower
till they were out of sight. And Randal saw them ride away, not on
hard, smooth roads like ours, but along a green grassy track, the water
splashing up to their stirrups where they crossed the marshes.
[Illustration: Page 240]
Then the sky turned as red as blood, in the sunset, and next it grew
brown, like the rust on a sword; and the Tweed below, when they rode the
ford, was all red and gold and brown.
Then time went on; that seemed a long time to Randal. Only the women
were left in the house, and Randal played with the shepherd’s children.
They sailed boats in the mill-pond, and they went down to the boat-pool
and watched to see the big copper-coloured salmon splashing in the
still water. One evening Randal looked up suddenly from his play. It was
growing dark. He had been building a house with the round stones and wet
sand by the river. He looked up, and there was his own father! He was
riding all alone, and his horse, _Sir Hugh_, was very lean and lame, and
scarred with the spurs. The spear in his father’s hand was broken, and
he had no sword; and he looked neither to right nor to left. His eyes
were wide open, but he seemed to see nothing.
Randal cried out to him, “Father! Father!” but he never glanced at
Randal. He did not look as if he heard him, or knew he was there, and
suddenly he seemed to go away, Randal did not know how or where.
Randal was frightened.
He ran into the house, and went to his mother.
“Oh, mother,” he said, “I have seen father! He was riding all alone, and
he would not look at me. _Sir Hugh_ was lame!”
“Where has he gone?” said Lady Ker, in a strange voice.
“He went away out of sight,” said Randal. “I could not see where he
went.”
Then his mother told him it could not be, that his father would not have
come back alone. He would not leave his men behind him in the war.
But Randal was so sure, that she did not scold him. She knew he believed
what he said.
He saw that she was not happy.
All that night, which was the Fourth of September, in the year 1513, the
day of Flodden fight, Randal’s mother did not go to bed. She kept moving
about the house. Now she would look from the tower window up Tweed; and
now she would go along the gallery and look down Tweed from the other
tower. She had lights burning in all the windows. All next day she was
never still. She climbed, with two of her maids, to the top of the hill
above Yair, on the other side of the river, and she watched the roads
down Ettrick and Yarrow. Next night she slept little, and rose early.
About noon, Randal saw three or four men riding wearily, with tired
horses. They could scarcely cross the ford of Tweed, the horses were so
tired. The men were Simon Grieve the butler, and some of the tenants.
They looked very pale; some of them had their heads tied up, and there
was blood on their faces. Lady Ker and Randal ran to meet them.
Simon Grieve lighted from his horse, and whispered to Randal’s mother.
Randal did not hear what he said, but his mother cried, “I knew it! I
knew it!” and turned quite white.
“Where is he?” she said.
Simon pointed across the hill. “They are bringing the corp,” he said.
Randal knew the “corp” meant the dead body.
He began to cry. “Where is my father?” he said, “where is my father?”
His mother led him into the house. She gave him to the old nurse, who
cried over him, and kissed him, and offered him cakes, and made him a
whistle with a branch of plane tree, So in a short while Randal only
felt puzzled. Then he forgot, and began to play. He was a very little
boy.
Lady Ker shut herself up in her own room--her “bower,” the servants
called it.
Soon Randal heard heavy steps on the stairs, and whispering. He wanted
to run out, and his nurse caught hold of him, and would not have let him
go, but he slipped out of her hand, and looked over the staircase.
They were bringing up the body of a man stretched on a shield.
It was Randal’s father.
He had been slain at Flodden, fighting for the king. An arrow had gone
through his brain, and he had fallen beside James IV., with many another
brave knight, all the best of Scotland, the Flowers of the Forest.
What was it Randal saw, when he thought he met his father in the
twilight, three days before?
He never knew. His mother said he must have dreamed it all.
The old nurse used to gossip about it to the maids. “He’s an unco’
bairn, oor Randal; I wush he may na be fey.”
She meant that Randal was a strange child, and that strange things would
happen to him.
[Illustration: Chapter Three]