It Happened in the Highlands(23)

She understood his feelings. Cuffe made a forlorn little figure, sitting  in the dense shadow of the chestnut trees, his head resting on his  knees. He'd tossed his tam somewhere and was yanking out clumps of the  long grass.

Wynne roused himself and took a deep breath before turning his attention to her.

"We're here," he said quietly. "We may as well go in. Would you care to see the inside of the house?"

She shook her head and placed a hand on his arm. "Go to him. Talk to him."

"Cuffe doesn't want to talk to me. He already knows I won't give him what he wants. I can't send him back."

He was aging before her eyes, lines of concern creased his brow.

"Go sit with him then," she suggested, motioning in the child's direction. "He needs to know that you understand he's in pain."

"To what purpose?"

She could hear the naval commander in the utterance of those words. He  was frustrated. She knew what worked with some men, instilling obedience  in their children, was not Wynne's way. Her own father, though gruff  and short-tempered, was a loving man with very different ideas about  what a parent's role should be.

"Simply to let him talk about the life he left behind. Coax him to tell  you in his own words what hurts," she said. "Perhaps you may learn how  to make things better for him and for yourself."

Gently and without warning, he lifted her chin and placed a chaste kiss  on her lips. The look of tenderness in his eyes took her breath away.

As he walked toward his son, Jo remained where she was, hoping they could break down the walls between them.

Wynne reached Cuffe and the two exchanged a few words. From his  gestures, it looked as if he was asking for permission to join his son.  She felt the world stand still. Finally, she saw the slight shrug, and  she let out a sigh of relief as he sat on the grass.

Not wanting to intrude on their privacy, she went into the house.

Like so many tower houses, stone stairs ran along the outside walls, and  she went up to a landing and through an arched doorway into a large  great hall with a cavernous fireplace at the far end.

A carved stone medallion above the fireplace depicted two unicorns  holding a shield that bore the rampant lion of the Stewarts, and Jo  found herself staring vacantly at it. No matter how hard she tried to  focus on the stonework or the plan of the building, her mind continually  returned to the conversation they'd had on their way here and the one  that was happening now.                       
       
           



       

She couldn't recall a question about her childhood jarring her the way  Cuffe's had done. For all the years that Ohenewaa had been a part of her  life, rarely had she imagined the old woman's life outside of the world  they lived in. Hertfordshire and London and Baronsford comprised the  entire universe for Jo until she'd grown. It was where they lived, where  they belonged. She didn't remember ever asking Ohenewaa if she had  another family, people who waited for her and hoped someday she'd  return, as Cuffe put it. After she died, Jo recalled no conversation  about where she should be buried, only that her mother wanted Ohenewaa  interred with the family. Whether her adoptive parents ever asked the  older woman's wishes, Jo didn't know.

Jo tried to shake off these thoughts and made her way back to the  stairs. The smell of stone and ancient fires filled her senses as she  climbed to the next level, and she thought of all the people she'd known  who lost their families and their homes through acts of violence. The  freed Africans and islanders she'd lived with at Melbury Hall who had  seen unspeakable crimes against them. The Scottish women and children,  shunned by society, who found sanctuary at the residence she established  in the tower house near Baronsford. Even her sister-in-law Grace, who'd  witnessed her father's murder at the hands of assassins, in desperation  hid herself in a crate being shipped to an unknown destination. All of  them severed irrevocably from their past, with only the slightest chance  of surviving the present, facing a world in which the future was dark  and bleak.

Upstairs, Jo entered a long corridor, lit by a construction opening in  the stone at the far end. Doors led to what she guessed were  bedchambers. As she walked in and out of rooms, she thought about her  own birth mother. She'd spoken to servants and farmers who were around  at the time of her birth. Everyone had a story, even haughty people like  Lady Nithsdale, and Jo had etched them into her memory.

None of them added much to what Jo heard from her adoptive mother: the  words of an old woman and a few utterances of a dying, wild-eyed girl  whose only fears were for her newborn bairn.

All the poor creature ever said was that her name was Jo . . .

Don't know if she was a faerie child or just cast out on account o' the child swelling in her . . .

Reckoned she had no man she was a-going to, and no husband left behind. Leastwise, she never mentioned any . . .

Terrified . . . kept that muddy plaid pulled over her like a shroud.

"Those poor people, cast out of their homes in the Highland clearances,  had been stripped of everything," Jo's mother told her. "And what  awaited them at the end of their journey looked to be nothing but more  misery, if they didn't die on the road itself. They were torn from their  kin, their land, their homes. And still, they were proud. Jo died with  her tiny, tartan-swaddled daughter in one arm while her other hand  clutched mine. You were her child."

Jo wiped away the tears on her face and looked out a small window at the  father and son sitting on the knoll below. Her life was a story of a  displacement too. Without the woman who took her home and raised her,  she too would have surely died in a muddy ditch on a road to nowhere.

But to someone, somewhere, Jo's birth mother belonged. There had to be  people who cared about her, who loved her, who worried fearfully about  what had become of her.

Perhaps, she thought, a man still lived who cared for her. A man  who-years later, in spite of a badly damaged mind-continued to sketch  endlessly the woman he'd lost.

As she watched Wynne and Cuffe sitting together, rays of sunlight  spilled over the tower house and lit the grassy area around them. The  child's shoulders were shaking while his father spoke steadily. Then  Wynne placed an arm around his son and drew him close.

A single tear slid down Jo's cheek. She loved Wynne. And she'd never  stopped loving him. Never. Not through all the years when hope was gone.

* * *

When Wynne first approached his son, he thought they wouldn't speak at  all. But Jo was right. Cuffe wanted to talk to him, to someone, and once  he began, the floodgates burst open.

He only needed to ask about Jamaica, about the village in the  mountainous forests above Falmouth. About the house Cuffe lived in with  his grandmother. He didn't need to say anything else, for his son talked  of Nanny until homesickness and grief nearly choked him.                       
       
           



       

The trees, the grass, the pond, the dark hair resting against Wynne's  shoulder became a blur as he struggled against the raw emotion his son's  words and tears unleashed in him. He waited, allowing the tranquility  of the woods and the water to calm Cuffe's sobs before he spoke.

"You want to be there with her, I know. You feel your place is to help  your grandmother." Wynne forced the words out through the tightness in  his throat. "But Nanny's last letter before I sent for you convinced me  that her sole hope, her greatest prayer, was that you come to live  here."

"But why?"

"Because she was worried about you."

"But I'm worried about her!" he cried.

"Your Nanny saw more trouble coming on the island, and she was afraid you'd be caught up in it."

"I'll stay out of it. I won't do anything to make her worry."

"Nanny has lived through troubles before. She knows how young men and  boys get swept up in it, whether they mean to or not. It's the nature of  war, and she said war is coming between the Maroons and the plantation  owners." Wynne rubbed his son's back. "Nanny told me she'd die if you  were taken by the authorities or hurt for tagging along."

"If you let me go back, I swear I won't do any of those things." Cuffe  pulled away and turned his pleading eyes on him. "I'll stay close to  her, I promise. I won't even leave the village."

He knew his son was mature far beyond his years. Cuffe had grown up  hearing about or witnessing with his own eyes the ruthlessness of the  landowners. The injustice would inevitably drive him to resist.

It had been more than seven years since slave-trading was made illegal,  but little had changed in the islands. Wynne was a military man and he  believed in the Maroon's fight. He too had seen the evils of slavery  firsthand. Too many in England profited by the exploitation of human  beings, and too many turned a blind eye to it.