Page 24 of It Happened in the Highlands
“I’m guessing Abram is halfway to Inverness by now,” Dermot complained. “But how can we keep Charles Barton safe when we don’t know where the danger is coming from?”
* * *
“I should run away now,” Cuffe murmured, looking out the window at the rising moon and the patches of forest on the mountains to the west.
This place wasn’t home. He turned his back to the window and frowned at the open door. He could be gone, and no one would miss him.
Instead, he sat hard on the floor and slid back against the wall, cramming himself between two chairs.
Only an inch or so was left of the candle he’d lit on the captain’s desk. The wax dripping down the side reminded him of the tears on his Nanny’s wrinkled cheeks when she’d pushed him toward the solicitor who’d come to bring him here. She said she had no choice. She was getting on in years. Be dying soon. He had to go to his father.
Dying.Cuffe stabbed at the stubborn tears that kept finding their way out. They came every time he thought about her. How many nights had he lain in bed worrying about who was taking care of his Nanny now that he was gone? Bringing her water in the morning, moving the heavy pots hanging over her fire, fetching wood, fixing the roof when it sprang a leak during the hard May rains.
He took care ofheras much as she took care of him. And their two-room cottage in the Cockpit village above Falmouth was home. Not this place with its houses of stone and its guards and lunatics roaming the gardens and living right beneath him. This wasn’t home.
Twelve pounds. A bloody fortune. During the crossing from Jamaica, he’d heard the men working on the ship say that’s how much it took to pay for passage in steerage. He had to come up with that or try to get hired on as crew. Even if he managed to find a ship sailing to the West Indies, hiring on was risky. He’d heard plenty of stories of free Jamaicans being abducted and sold as slaves to some passing trader. What was to stop a white ship’s master from selling him on some sugar island along the way?
No, he’d be safer paying for his passage. But twelve pounds! He’d have to work for years to save that kind of money. And Nanny would tan his hide if he stole it or hurt someone to get it.
Cuffe wiped his face with a sleeve and stared at his hands. But that’s exactly what he’d done tonight. He’d allowed himself to be tricked, and a man was hurt because of it.
The captain wouldn’t believe him now if he said he didn’t know.
Abram knew he was trying to make money. The dog had been there the time he made a deal with the farm lads. He was the one who separated them when they were fighting. He pretended to be Cuffe’s friend. He even told Cuffe he’d help him leave the Abbey.
Liar. Cheat. Evil, she’d said.
That room, the ward. He’d never been inside it until tonight. It was the way Abram described it. The men the doctor kept there seemed normal enough when Cuffe saw them outside. Some talked a little loud or said strange things. A few never spoke at all. One just sat and stared at the bushes in the gardens. But none of them ever harmed another, that he’d seen. And when he’d slipped into the ward tonight, they were all sleeping.
He pulled his knees to his chest and rested his head. There was no one here who cared. No one liked him. He was nothing to them at the Abbey, but back in Jamaica an old woman loved him. To Nanny, Cuffe was the sunshine that warmed her ancient bones in the daytime, and the moonlight that showed her the road when her dim eyes struggled to see.
Man grow; wait ’pon man,she’d always say. A boy will eventually grow up to become a man.
Cuffe never knew his mother. Nanny was everything to him. To others, he was only ten years old, but to Nanny, he was her little man. And he needed to get back to her.
No matter how tight he tried to shut his eyes, fresh tears squeezed through. He missed her. He missed her songs. Her stories. He missed her scolding. Cuffe felt a fist tightening around his heart as he recalled the way she fawned over him when he did right.
It was getting late. The sounds from downstairs lessened until the house was silent again. His tears finally stopped, and he sat breathing in the country smells and listening to a family of foxes yipping in the distance as the moon crossed the corner of the window. Finally, he heard the captain coming up the steps.
He quickly stood. He’d done wrong and he expected to be punished. The captain had never laid a hand on him, but Cuffe almost wished he would. He couldn’t bear spending another extra hour tallying sums in Mr. Cameron’s dusty office.
The captain stopped in the doorway, and Cuffe kept his eyes on the dark floor between them.
He’d have to talk to him, though he knew it meant his last plan of getting back to Nanny was about to be destroyed. For weeks now, Cuffe never spoke a word to him. Since he’d arrived at the Abbey, he’d deliberately treated him as if he didn’t matter. If the man grew to hate him, if he got tired of his surly ways, he thought maybe he’d pay his passage back home.
This morning in the village, Cuffe thought he’d won. The captain had never been as angry as he was after dragging him out of the path of the carriage horses.
But he couldn’t play that game anymore. The guest, Lady Josephine, ordered him to talk to the captain. In her hard tone and soft ways, she reminded him of Nanny.Your responsibility,she said.
The captain’s silence made him jumpy inside. It was like the thick feeling of the air before a summer storm burst open. If he were a little boy again, he’d run and hide before the lightning began.
The coins he’d taken from Abram shone dully on the desk beside the guttering candle.
“It’s all there.” He pushed the breath from his lungs and the words rushed after. He motioned toward the coins. “The money Abram paid me. And I didn’t think anyone would be hurt. He said it was a lark to get even with Robbie at the door for some daft prank in the kitchen this morning.”
The silence continued to hang heavy between them, and Cuffe was too afraid to look up. He didn’t know if the captain believed him or not. He pressed his hands against his thighs to keep them from shaking. He didn’t want to cry. He didn’t want to beg to be forgiven.
“I know I did wrong. Nanny always says if you follow a fool, you’re the greater fool,” he said, forcing himself to steal a look at the man at the door. His face was in the shadows. “I was a fool to believe Abram. I deserve whatever punishment you decide on.”
