The Raiders: Being Some Passages In The Life Of John Faa, Lord And Earl Of Little Egypt
and not of the earth, with broad, flat feet that made no noise, and a demon mark in scarlet upon its side, which told that the foul fiend himself that night followed the chase. May Mischief clung to my arm, and I thought she had swooned away. But the beasts passed some way beneath us, like spirits that flit by without noise, save for the ghostly baying which made one sweat with fear.
As the sounds broke farther from us that were in the graveyard the horsemen dispersed in a wild access of terror. We could hear them belabouring their horses and riding broadcast over the fields, crying tempestuously to each other as they went. And down the wind the bay of the ghostly hunters died away.
May Maxwell and I stood so a long while ere we could loose from one another. We only held hands and continued to look, and that strangely. I wanted to thank her in words but could not, for something came into my throat and dried my mouth. I dropped her hand suddenly. Yet as I searched for words, dividing the mind between gratitude and coltishness, not one could I find in my time of need.
May Maxwell stood a little while silent before me, her hands fallen at her side, looking down as though expecting something. I could not think what. And then she took the skirt of her dress in her hand, dusted and smoothed it a moment, and so began to move slowly away. But I stood fixed like a halbert.
Then I knew by the dancing light in her eyes that something was coming that would make me like her worse than ever, yet I could not help it. What with my lonely life on Isle Rathan I was as empty of words as a drum of tune.
‘Guid e’en to ye,’ she said, dropping me a curtsy; ‘virtue is its ain reward, I ken. It’s virtuous to do a sheep a good turn, but a kennin’ uninterestin’. Guid e’en to ye, Sheep!’
With that she turned and left me speechless, holding by the wall. Yet I have thought of many things since which I might have said – clever things too.
May Mischief walked very stately and dignified across the moonlight, and passed the open grave which the riders had made as though she did not care a button for it. At the gap in the wall she turned (looking mighty pretty and sweet, I do allow), nodded her head three times, and said solemnly, ‘Baa!’
As I rowed home in the gloaming of the morning, when the full flood-tide of daylight was drowning the light of the moon, I decided within myself that I hated the girl worse than ever. Whatever she had done for me, I could never forgive her for making a mock of me.
‘Sheep,’ quoth she, and again ‘Baa!’ It was unbearable. Yet I remembered how she looked as she said it, and the manner in which she nodded her head, which, as I tell you, was vastly pretty.
1 May, the old Scots diminutive for Mary, was pronounced, not like the name of the month, but Mei – the German ei, a characteristic sound which occurs also in ‘gye,’ ‘stey,’ &c.
JUST WHY MY father called me Patrick I have never yet been able to make out. His own name was John, which, had he thought of it in time, was a good name enough for me. It may have been part of his humorsomeness, for indeed he used to say, ‘I have little to leave you, Patrick, but this auld ramshackle house on the Isle Rathan and your excellent name. You will be far on in life, my boy, before you begin to bless me for christening you Patrick Heron, but when you begin you will not cease till the day of your death.’
I am now in the thirty-seventh year of my age, yet have I not so begun to bless my father – at least not for the reason indicated.
My father, John Heron of Isle Rathan, on the Solway shore, was never a strong man all the days of him. But he married a lass from the hills who brought him no tocher, but, what was better, a strong dower of sense and good health. She died, soon after I was born, of the plague which came to Dumfries in the Black Year, and from that day my father was left alone with me in the old house on the Isle of Rathan. John Heron was the laird of a barren heritage, for Rathan is but a little isle – indeed only an isle when the tide is flowing. Except in the very slackest of the neaps there is always twice a day a long track of shells and shingle out from the tail of its bank. This track is, moreover, somewhat dangerous, for Solway tide flows swift and the sands are shifting and treacherous. So we went and came for the most part by boat, save when I or some of the lads were venturesome, as afterwards when I got well acquaint with Mary Maxwell, whom I have already called May Mischief, in the days of a lad’s first mid-summer madness.
Here on the Isle of Rathan my father taught me English and Latin, Euclid’s science of lines and how to reason with them for oneself. He ever loved the mathematic, because he said even God Almighty works by geometry. He taught me also surveying and land measuring. ‘It is a good trade, and will be more in request,’ he used to say, ‘when the lairds begin to parcel out the commonties and hill pastures, as they surely will. It’ll be a better trade to your hand than keepin’ the blackfaced yowes aff the heuchs o’ Rathan.’
And so it has proved; and many is the time I have talked over with my wife the strange far-seeing prophecy of my father about what the lairds would do in more settled times. Indeed, all through my tale, strange as it is (may I be aided to tell it plainly and truly), I have occasion to refer to my father’s sayings. Many is the time I have been the better of minding his words; many the time, also, that I have fallen with an unco blaff because I have neglected to heed his warnings. But of this anon, and perhaps more than enough.
It was a black day for me, Patrick Heron, when my father lay a-dying. I remember it was a bask day in early spring. The tide was coming up with a strong drive of east wind wrestling against it, and making a clattering jabble all about the rocks of Rathan.
‘Lift me up, Paitrick,’ said my father, ‘till I see again the bonny tide as it lappers again’ the auld toor. It will lapper there mony and mony a day an’ me no here to listen. Ilka time ye hear it, laddie, ye’ll mind on yer faither that loved to dream to the plashing o’t, juist because it was Solway salt water and this his ain auld toor o’ the Isle Rathan.’
So I lifted him up according to his word, till through the narrow window set in the thickness of the ancient wall, he could look away to the Mull, which was clear and cold slaty blue that day – for, unless it brings the dirty white fog, the east wind clears all things.
As he looked a great fishing gull turned its head as it soared, making circles in the air, and fell – a straight white streak cutting the cold blue sky of that spring day.
‘Even thus has my life been, Paitrick. I have been most of my time but a great gull diving for herring on an east-windy day. Whiles I hae gotten a bit flounder for my pains, and whiles a rive o’ drooned whalp, but o’ the rale herrin’ – desperate few, man, desperate few.
‘I hae tried it a’ ways, Paitrick, my man, ye ken,’ he would say, for in the long winter forenights when all was snug inside and the winds were trying the doors, he and I did little but talk. He lay many months a-dying. But he was patient, and most anxious that he should give me all his stores of warning and experience before he went from me and Rathan.
‘No that, at the first go off, ye’ll profit muckle, Paitrick, my man,’ he would say; ‘me telling ye that there are briers i’ the buss will no advantage ye greatly when ye hae to gae skrauchlin’ through. Ye’ll hae to get berried and scartit, whammelt and riven, till ye learn as I hae learned. Ay, ay, ye wull that!’
My father was a dark man, not like me who am fair like my mother. He had a pointed beard that he trimmed with the shears, which in a time of shaven men made him kenspeckle. He was very particular about his person, and used to set to the washing of his linen every second week, working like an old campaigner himself, and me helping – a job I had small stomach for. But at least he learned me to be clean by nature and habit.
‘We