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."
If the captain had struck him with a rod, it wouldn't have been as painful as this waiting, but Cuffe had no choice except to weather it until his silence ran its course.
"Go back to your room. Tomorrow I'll talk to you about punishment."
Cuffe was surprised at the note of exhaustion in the captain's voice, but he was relieved at being dismissed. At the door, as he tried to hurry past the man, a large hand came down on his shoulder. For a moment he thought, this was it. The beating. He stood and braced himself.
"I need you to promise," the captain said. "I want your word that you'll stay in your room until I send for you."
My word, Cuffe thought. He was trusting in his honor despite what he'd done.
"I'll stay there, Captain," he said, meaning it.
Chapter 9
Night's restless hours crawled ever so slowly over rugged ground toward the dawn, and when the earliest rays of the sun broke across the furrowed fields, Jo was already dressed. She had to get out and walk.
As she hurried past Wynne and Cuffe's rooms, the inner arguments that kept her pacing for much of the night once again ignited in her.
She'd lied to the father, but shortly afterward convinced the son to reveal the truth. What worried her was how Wynne perceived her interference. She was willing to argue her case if he gave her the chance. But beyond that, she was apprehensive about Cuffe and wondered what had transpired between the two. She'd been trying for hours to convince herself that none of this should matter, that she was here simply to learn more about Mr. Barton and his sketches. She was not staying for Wynne or his son.
Buttoning her spencer jacket and wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, she descended the stairs thinking of the attack last night. Charles Barton had an enemy. She'd overheard Cuffe mention the name Abram. She wondered now if the man had acted for reasons of his own or if he was only a rung of a ladder held by others.
Two attendants sitting by the door to the ward looked half-asleep but stood and doffed their caps to her as she went by. Jo understood there was no point in asking to see Barton. After last night, a visit to the ward would need the approval of the doctor.
Going out through the gardens, Jo followed a path toward the rising sun. Stables and a carriage house lay beyond groves of tall chestnut, and as she passed cottages of farm laborers, the smoke of wood fires rose above the thatched roofs. She exchanged greetings with a woman carrying a bucket of milk who stopped to watch her go by. Open fields lay beyond, and groups of workers were trudging toward their day's toil.
A few minutes later, Jo paused at the top of a small brae and looked south across the rolling landscape toward the River Don. Mist was rising from lower-lying pastures and along two brooks that snaked across the countryside toward the river. Though she couldn't see the village, she saw numerous cottages and sheds, as well as the fields used as golfing links by the Squire and his brother, the vicar.
Something about this place touched her with a feeling of familiarity, though she knew she'd never been here before. The Highlands was so different from the Borders, where Baronsford was located, and totally different from Hertfordshire, where she'd spent a great deal of time growing up. But the bracing air, the smell of the gorse, the way the light dispersed in the mist all affected her.
Turning her steps toward the hills rising to the north, she walked along a path that followed one of the brooks and came upon a series of fish ponds formed by small dams. As she stood by a clump of willows, her attention was drawn to an ancient tower house nestled against a forest of spruce. She wondered who lived there so close to the old Abbey.