The Runaway's Gold (5 page)

“Don't be daft. Do you think anyone else would be out in a gale such as this?”

Rain pelted down me forehead as I glanced from his face to the arm that he held behind his back.

John stared for a moment and then shrugged. “Well, you might as well know.” The dim light from the lantern caught a glint in his eyes as he brought his hand forward. “I finally found it.”

I gasped, having seen the wee caramel-colored pouch only two other times in me life.

“Took me five years of waiting and watching to finally figure out where the Ol' Cod stashed it.”

John shifted his weight from left to right as he ran his fingers through his dripping yellow hair.

It was the pouch that held something no other crofter had, as far as I knew—coins. I had no idea how many, only that the family was forbidden to ever speak of it, so fearful was Daa that it would be confiscated to cover his debts. I had seen it two years before when he, with a scowl, pulled it from his pocket to pay Andrew Johnson, the smithy in Skeld, for repairing the tuskhar we used to cut the peat. Then again, four months back, on the night Midder and our wee brother Michael died, when he silently paid the midwife who had failed to save them.

Daa never trusted a soul with where it was hidden, so it was only fitting John had taken it to the broch, the one place Daa's stiff leg kept him from venturing. John and I knew every stone of that place, every curve of every rock. And when William was still with us—dear, lovely William, who would laugh at the drop of a hat, and smile so deeply at the littlest of things
that his elfin cheeks raised clear to his eyes—the three of us had pretended it was our fort and we were the last mighty warriors of Shetland. The wonderfully strange picture of a tree carved on a smooth stone next to where John stood we fancied the symbol of our kingdom. Or, perhaps, a secret crest of valor. Imagine—a tree on the treeless island of Shetland! No other broch could claim such a thing as that. Some of the branches on the bottom right had been mysteriously left off, as if, we secretly guessed, its maker had been captured before completing his work.

What I didn't know that night was how close to the truth we were.

Lifting the lantern as John fondled the pouch, I caught a glint in his lively hazel eyes. The eyes that locked onto yours, no matter who you were, and held you fast.

“Last Tuesday I saw the crafty miser creep down from the ladder by the harnesses in the byre when he thought no one was looking. Next chance I got I stood on that same ladder and prodded among the turf above those rafters. Hah!” he shouted through the wind, his smile growing dark. “I'll not risk me life another year at sea, belly aching with hunger, and
him
hiding a pouch of coins!”

He turned to the scattald below.

“All that talk about us Robertsons being better than the others. Boasting of his ties to the English just because he thinks that proves his ties to royalty. Chris—have you ever wondered why you and our sisters have no friends?”

I thought of how Jeremy Williamson had come by to see me. And Nicol Magnuson. “Not our kind,” Daa had warned. “I'll not have the likes of those families on our croft.”

The carving of the tree above his shoulder, John clenched his fists as he spoke, his words roaring above the moan of the gale.

I had never seen him in such a state.

“Look at us!” he said, rounding on me. “Clothes in tatters, no flesh to speak of on our bones, and him with
this
!” He shook the pouch in me face, then started to pace. “The man's not right in his mind. You must know that! How many a Shetlander risked his neck hauling casks of gin in the dead of night for him to skim off a cut of their share? Him and his years of side deals with Marwick—we know he never gave the others what they deserved. Here, in me hand, is proof that Daa, through years of cheating, lying, and scheming, has enough to get us out! He had it all along! Do you know, Chris, how much is in here?”

I shrugged. Not only had I never touched a coin, I hadn't any idea what a pound or even a shilling could buy.

“Enough to outfit our share of a sloop for an entire season!” John closed his fist tightly around the leather, steam coming from his mouth into the chill of the storm. “We could begin to escape the clutches of Marwick! But no—Daa thinks like all the dim-witted Shetlanders:
Better the known evil of the merchants than the unknown of breaking free
. They've been waiting for generations, but no one ever dares! Lor', Chris,” he bellowed, “don't you ever dream of being free?”

I shuddered, watching his wild eyes and swallowing hard. Did I want to be free? Did I yearn for a life beyond the struggles of the croft? “Me belly aches, John,” I said quietly. “I think, perhaps, I'm too hungry to think of freedom.”

But so much in a fury was me brother that night that he went on as if I hadn't spoken.

“Now, if it was Knut Blackbeard's coins, or Gutcher's, or some other gullible soul's,” he muttered, “well then, of course, he'd find plenty of ways to spend it. But Hell itself will freeze before he parts with his own shillings to feed his own family's bellies and save us from the talons of Marwick. The way I see it, with the smuggling dropped off and Daa starting all this trouble with that Peterson ewe, I either leave with the pouch or starve by May.”

“Leave?” His words hit like a stone to me gut. “We're past due on the rent! And the fishing starts next month! You know I'm not strong enough to pull in those cod lines meself!”

As he started to turn away, I surprised us both by dropping the lantern and grabbing his shoulders. “Wallace Marwick owns us, John! We've so much debt we'll be fishing the deep waters our entire lives before we pay him back. He has no other use for us. We'll be tossed from the croft by summer—added to the list of paupers—
left to the charity of the Kirk!
”

I knew—we all knew—about our neighbor Jeemie Black, his five younger sisters, and seven cousins. Father and uncles lost at sea, the family split apart. The Kirk shuffling them from
croft to croft to work for a place to sleep and a portion of what little food the families in our parish could spare.

A crack of thunder shook the hill as our eyes locked, wind pulling across the rain-drenched stones that surrounded us. Then John ripped me arms from his shoulders and shoved me aside, saying words I never wanted to hear: “You're just like the rest of 'em!”

And for the first time in me life I feared him. Until he did what he always did when anyone challenged him—he started to laugh. Long and hard, throwing back his freckled face and closing his eyes as if I had just told him the most wonderful tale he had heard in months.

“Chris,” he said, eyes ablaze, “let's not forget what
you've
done tonight.”

“I—what have I—”

“Ya just
murdered
Pete Peterson's prize ewe, me peerie brother!”

Then he grabbed firmly to me shoulder, brows furrowed, and leaned in.

“Stolen property, that was! Why, should Sheriff Nicolson find out, you'll be starting a very long stay in Lerwick Prison. I've seen the place—deep inside the mighty stone walls of Fort Charlotte, perched high above Lerwick Harbor. They say that those that get locked up are never seen again. No, instead of worrying about me, you best make a plan for yourself before Peterson finds that dead ewe in our sisters' bed.”

It wasn't until that moment that the horror of what I had done began to sink in. I thought of the caaing whales we spotted on occasion in the voes near our croft. Sleek, powerful creatures, some more than twenty feet long, all foolishly wedded to only one leader; something clever islanders had long ago discovered. By setting out silently, ten or twelve boats at a time, crofters find the leader and then suddenly go at him, hooting and hollering, waving pitchforks and brooms—until, in utter panic, he charges for the shore, the rest of his school blindly following by the hundreds. And there the marvelously sleek creatures lie, helplessly stranded on the beach, only to be slaughtered—flinched and boiled—the head blubber especially prized for lamp oil, the carcasses left to rot.

I, too, had followed blindly. Followed me Daa. And I had followed him straight to the Devil himself.

I opened me right hand wide, still feeling deep in me flesh what, just a short while ago, I had done. “But Daa—he needed me to. You were there.” And somehow, I thought to meself, I had needed to be needed. Needed by him.

Rain dripped into me eyes as I shifted weight from one foot to the other. In me head Daa's voice screamed, “
Snuff—her—out!”

“Try and tell that to the Sheriff Court in Lerwick,” John said, laughing. “Christopher Robertson, when will you learn? Daa has never cared for anyone above himself. Never.”

“He loved our Midder.” The words tumbled out before I could stop them. I thought of the way Daa had looked at her
from across the room. How he had so often walked past her as she stood at the fire, letting his hand touch her cheek ever so lightly.

“Hah! Did you even see him shed a tear the night she and wee Michael took their last breath? Ever see him visit her grave?”

I thought of that endless night. Of him sitting before her, his eyes vacant as her chest lay still. How he had slowly risen to his feet and walked out the door, gone for days without so much as a word.

“The man wasn't about to commit a crime so dark himself!” John continued. “Not a tenth-generation ‘Robertson,' all convinced the entire island owes him their firstborn. The same man who talked his best friend, Knut Blackbeard, into spendin' six months in prison for the crime
he
committed! Certainly not when he could get some other luckless soul—his youngest son no less—to do the deed.”

It was then, as I stared into me beloved brother's darting hazel eyes—the eyes I had grown to trust above all others since the passing of William—that I remembered something me Midder had said when I was just a wee boy of six or seven, but had never forgotten.

“Christopher,” she had said, in a hushed tone, while we were planting cabbages, “take care with your brother John.”

She had looked down as she spoke, working the earth with red, chapped hands, never meeting me eyes with hers. “For I fear,” she continued, and then hesitated, “there are times when his honor is not as it should be.”

Midder wit
we called it. Words of truth passed down by those women much wiser than we. I remembered looking at the soft skin of her cheeks and the wisps of reddish-blond hair blowing across her eyes, puzzled by what had prompted her to say such a thing about the older brother I idolized. Not long afterward some of our butter and oat stores had gone missing, and I wondered if perhaps John had been responsible. But when, a few days later, I found a time when me Midder and I were alone and asked what she had meant, she quickly shook her head.

She looked first left and then right, her cheeks turning ashen. “Never would I have said such a thing about me own sweet bairn!”

From that day on she took great pains never to be alone with me, as if fearful I'd ask again. As if fearful of betraying the son she adored. And in the last moments before her heart stopped beating the night she failed in giving birth to wee Michael, it was John's hand she clutched, not mine, pressing it close to her heaving chest while I stood stiffly at her side. As I hovered silently, frozen in place, blackness and despair seeping into me heart when we knew all hope of saving her was gone, I listened in agony as John told her he loved her and tenderly stroked her fevered brow.

The rain on John's face shimmered as another wretched branch of lightning ripped through the sky. I glanced suddenly at the pouch. “And what's to keep
you
from Lerwick Prison?” I asked.

He laughed, playfully pressing the wee sack of coins to his cheek. “Oh, dunna worry about me. I haven't stolen anything. Only borrowing for a spell. The Ol' Cod doesn't even know it's missing.”

“He'll find out, soon enough.”

“Aye. But by then I'll be long gone. From what I hear, an English schooner was blown off course last night near Skeld Voe. On its way back from Bergen. Loaded with timber. Angus told me of it this morning.”

I wasn't sure who I feared more: John's friend Angus Moncrieff or Daa. Angus was bigger than any lad in Culswick, and mostly because he had so effective a right jab, even his Daa couldn't keep him from stealing the food from his own plate. He was a tall, sullen brute of a boy, distinguishable from quite a distance by cheeks pocked with red pimples and a line of thick black eyebrows, which extended, uninterrupted, across his forehead. And though the rest of our family had no friends that met with Daa's approval, Angus and John had been nearly inseparable since the Moncrieffs settled in Culswick from Bressay Isle five years before.

I knew there was little doubt the report of a wreck was true. With its treacherous winds and jagged shoreline, the west coast of Shetland had always been a graveyard for ships. Most of us considered a wreck of good-quality cargo a gift, and though no one admitted to praying for a wreck, the island being treeless and of few resources led many to pray that, should such a wreck happen, the good Lord would direct it to a nearby shore.

John stepped back, continuing to toss the pouch from one hand to the other. “This gale will finish the schooner off for sure, even in a voe as protected as Skeld. They'll be desperate to unload the timber. I'll use the coins to buy what I can, and then resell to Marwick for a tidy profit. Then it's off to America I'll go. With enough in me pockets to start anew.”

“America?” I gasped, the thought so preposterous—so utterly foreign to everything we knew—that I was sure he was joking.

“Aye! Where a crofter such as me can have a say in his future. And be free of the likes of Marwick and his kind forever!”