The View from Castle Rock Read Online Free PDF

surprised at the number of people his father seemed to know in the city of Edinburgh. You would think the people in the drinking place would be strangers to him, but it was evidently not so. Amongst the arguing and excited queer-sounding voices his father’s voice rose the loudest.
America,
he said, and slapped his hand on the plank for attention, the very way he would do at home. Andrew had heard that word spoken in that same tone long before he knew it was a land across the ocean. It was spoken as a challenge and an irrefutable truth but sometimes-when his father was not there-it was spoken as a taunt or a joke. His older brothers might ask each other, “Are ye awa to America?” when one of them put on his plaid
to
go out and do some chore such as penning the sheep. Or, “Why don’t ye be off to America?” when they had got into an argument, and one of them wanted to make the other out to be a fool.
    The cadences of his father’s voice, in the talk that succeeded that word, were so familiar, and Andrew’s eyes so bleary with the smoke, that in no time he had fallen asleep on his feet. He wakened when several pushed together out of the place and his father with them. Some one of them said, “Is this your lad here or is it some tinker squeezed in to pick our pockets?” and his father laughed and took Andrew’s hand and they began their climb. One man stumbled and another man knocked into him and swore. A couple of women swiped their baskets at the party with great scorn, and made some remarks in their unfamiliar speech, of which Andrew could only make out the words “daecent bodies” and “public footpaths.”
    Then his father and the friends stepped aside into a much broader street, which in fact was a courtyard, paved with large blocks of stone. His father turned and paid attention to Andrew at this point.
    “Do you know where you are, lad? You’re in the castle yard, and this is Edinburgh Castle that has stood for ten thousand years and will stand for ten thousand more. Terrible deeds were done here. These stones have run with blood. Do you know that?” He raised his head so that they all listened to what he was telling.
    “It was King Jamie asked the young Douglases to have supper with him and when they were fair sitten down he says, oh, we won’t bother with their supper, take them out in the yard and chop off their heads. And so they did. Here in the yard where we stand.
    “But that King Jamie died a leper,” he went on with a sigh, then a groan, making them all be still to consider this fate.
    Then he shook his head.
    “Ah, no, it wasn’t him. It was King Robert the Bruce that died a leper. He died a king but he died a leper.”
    Andrew could see nothing but enormous stone walls, barred gates, a redcoat soldier marching up and down. His father did not give him much time, anyway, but shoved him ahead and through an archway, saying, “Watch your heads here, lads, they was wee little men in those days. Wee little men. So is Boney the Frenchman, there’s a lot of fight in your wee little men.”
    They were climbing uneven stone steps, some as high as Andrew’s knees-he had to crawl occasionally-inside what as far as he could make out was a roofless tower. His father called out, “Are ye all with me then, are ye all in for the climb?” and some straggling voices answered him. Andrew got the impression that there was not such a crowd following as there had been on the street.
    They climbed far up in the roundabout stairway and at last came out on a bare rock, a shelf, from which the land fell steeply away. The rain had ceased for the present.
    “Ah, there,” said Andrew’s father. “Now where’s all the ones was tramping on our heels to get here?”
    One of the men just reaching the top step said, “There’s two-three of them took off to have a look at the Meg.”
    ’Engines of war,” said Andrew’s father. “All they have eyes for is engines of war. Take care they don’t go and blow