Dismounting by the stables, Wynne turned at the sound of a shout coming from the direction of the kitchen gardens.
"Captain!"
He shielded his eyes as he looked toward the voice. With his bald head shining, Hamish was stomping toward him, hauling a scowling ten-year-old boy along by the collar.
This certainly didn't bode well, Wynne thought, peering at his son's face as the two approached. Cuffe was sporting a welt over one eye, a bloodied nose, a swollen lower lip, and a torn shirt beneath his waistcoat and dirt-stained russet jacket.
Another fight. The lad had only been in Scotland for a month, and this was his fourth skirmish. Cuffe was living up to the warning his Jamaican grandmother sent when she'd written that she could no longer keep him.
Wynne knew nothing about raising a child, but he'd enlisted the aid of others to assist him. Cameron, the purser on his ship and now the bookkeeper at the Abbey, was to begin teaching the lad what he'd be learning in school. Hamish, lead man on the farms, was to instruct the boy about the practical side of managing the land, an education invaluable for a future landowner.
As post captain in the Royal Navy, Wynne had commanded a number of vessels and hundreds of men during his career. Lads younger than his son served aboard ship, and they all needed time to adjust to the life. He admired the ten-year-old's independent spirit, but Cuffe was beginning to worry him.
Wynne handed the reins to a stable hand as the two drew near.
"He's done it this time, Captain," the farm manager huffed. "This scoundrel of yers."
Hamish was known both for his patience and his stoical acceptance of the trials of farming in the Highlands. Whatever Cuffe had done now, it clearly had been enough to push the Highlander beyond his limits.
"What have you done, lad?" Wynne asked.
Thin but strong, with a ramrod-straight back, his son gazed steadily at the ground in front of him, his curly, collar-length brown hair falling partially across his battered face. He never looked Wynne in the eye or spoke to him-acts of rebellion, he supposed-but the boy would eventually come around. He had to.
"I'll tell ye, Captain," Hamish snapped, not waiting. "This loon of yers has turned the pigs out in the kitchen gardens."
Pigs in the garden. That was a first. He doubted the pigs did this damage to his face.
"Explain yourself," he ordered.
Cuffe's chin lifted and his deep brown eyes stared off at the mountains. He showed no hint of fear and certainly no suggestion of responding.
"I told the young miscreant to oversee the feeding of the pigs while I got ready for us to go out to the west farms. Next thing I knew, the porkers are running amok, the house is in an uproar, and Cook is rampaging, about as wild as I've ever seen her. Threatened to put yer son out for the faeries."
"How did he get the bruises on his face?"
"A fight, Captain." Hamish shook his head. "By the time we got the pigs back in their pens, we heard squalling so loud I thought the Bean Nighe-the demon washerwoman herself-was carrying off a bairn. Turned out yer lad was giving three of the farm lads a beating."
Looking at the injuries, Wynne wondered how bad the others must look.
"And two of them bigger than this one," the Highlander asserted. "Now, I know lads will scuffle from time to time, but we can't have the hospital governor's son beating up the very farm workers he's supposed to be overseeing."
There was no point in demanding answers. Wynne was well accustomed to the vow of silence Cuffe had obviously taken when it came to communicating with him. Over the past month, Wynne had managed the disciplining of the boy himself, but perhaps the chores he'd been assigning were not tough enough.
"I'll leave the issue of punishment for this infraction to you, Hamish."
Cuffe's face turned a shade darker, but he refused to look at Wynne.
"Take him," he ordered the Highlander. "My son needs to understand that if he refuses to present a reasonable defense for his actions, there are consequences to be paid."
The farm manager led Cuffe off, muttering about mucking shite out of the stables. According to Dermot, Hamish believed that tough, physical labor was the best way to teach and discipline, and maintain self-respect.
Walking along the side of the building toward the north annex, Wynne tried to remember what he'd been like at that age. As a second son, he'd endured the dreary routine of tutors at home while his older brother was away at Eton, and those men had never spared the rod in teaching him discipline. With the exception of developing an aversion for corporal punishment, he'd never questioned his life or the decisions that were made by his parents. He'd always accepted that those in authority knew best.
Years later, a duel fought on a grey London morning-and the long weeks of recovery that followed-had served to awaken him. He was twenty-two then and had been fortunate to see another sunrise.
As Wynne entered the north annex, the bookkeeper, Cameron, appeared at the bottom of a stairwell.
"Dr. McKendry is looking for you, Captain. He's in his office."
Telling the former purser that Cuffe would likely be absent from his afternoon lessons, Wynne then ascended the stairs. He walked past his own office-an oasis of order and calm-and entered Dermot's chaotic workplace. Regardless of the constant nagging of the housekeeper during the weekly cleaning, every surface of the spacious room was covered with papers and folders, and the floor was little better. Textbooks and medical journals were scattered about and piled in corners. Volumes lay open on every available chair and on top of stacks of paper.
Each man had his own method of managing his affairs, and neither interfered with the ways of the other, though Wynne was often sorely tempted by the sight of Dermot's mess.
Standing at a tall desk by a window, the doctor was inscribing notes in an open ledger. He turned around and tossed the pen on top of the book when he heard Wynne enter.
"You're back." He smiled, satisfaction evident on his face. "The most extraordinary circumstances have developed with our new patient."
"Charles Barton?" Wynne asked. "A change in his condition already?"
"Come and see for yourself." Dermot came around his desk.
Ten days ago, Charles Barton, fifty-six years of age, arrived at the Abbey emaciated and unresponsive, delivered for permanent care by his aging mother, a local landowner. Her son, Mrs. Barton explained, had arrived home at Tilmory Castle in this condition after sustaining a head injury during an explosion aboard some merchant ship months earlier.
Though the old woman had provided generous financial support to make certain her son would be well cared for in his final days, Dermot believed that Barton's demise was not imminent.
"I heard an uproar of some kind coming from the direction of the gardens," the doctor said, as they started down the stairs to the hospital ward.
Wynne nodded. "I understand the pigs had some extra greens in their diet, thanks to Cuffe."
The men exchanged a look. Nothing more needed to be said. Wynne's struggles with new parenthood weren't lost on Dermot. "Well, I'm certain Hamish will have everything back on an even keel in no time."
"I hope so," Wynne replied. "I took your aunt's recommendation and stopped down at the village and spoke to the vicar about providing Cuffe with some religious instruction. It was agreed that an hour a week would-"
"You should have asked Blane McKendry about golfing instruction instead." Dermot shook his head. "I happen to know that old heathen can teach Cuffe more about niblicks and longnoses than he can about Psalms and Beatitudes."
Regardless of the weather, the Squire and his brother the vicar met every day to chase their golf balls across the fields.
Wynne and Dermot entered the nearly empty ward. He'd seen many of the patients outside. At the far end of the long and spacious room, two handlers were settling Stevenson, the only unpredictable patient in the hospital. Still in his twenties, the former dockworker from Aberdeen had been diagnosed with "furious mania." Highly disturbed, he had occasional bouts of violence, and any irritation could upset him. Even now, he was upbraiding the handlers with loud obscenities and clutching his tam protectively to his chest.
Wynne knew it took a special temperament and character to treat lunatics. Dermot would not permit the use of shackles, though they were commonly used elsewhere, and only Stevenson was restrained at night. The doctor believed attempts should be made to cure these men, and short of that, they should at least be allowed to live decently.