The Runaway's Gold (8 page)

“That leads to Reawick and Garderhouse,” I said, puzzled. “There's nothing up there but a few scattered crofts.”

“Aye.” The man nodded slowly. Then he pulled the pipe from his mouth and banged the spent bowl of tobacco against his thigh. “But it's the only way to Lerwick if you dunna have a boat.”

An Unlikely Companion

erwick! John was going to Lerwick! A full day's walk on the other side of the island, the busiest port in Shetland. Crowded with ships from around the world, thieves, pickpockets, and a maze of streets and shops me mind could hardly fathom. Being only a short journey across the North Sea from Rotterdam and Bergen, it had, for as long as anyone could remember, been a stopover on the way to the rich fishing grounds of Greenland and Iceland. It was the home of Sheriff Nicolson. And of the island's prison, with its high stone walls overlooking the harbor. And the home of Wallace Marwick, whose empire of shipbuilders, coopers, chandlers, and seamen was a sight to behold.

The sounds of Skeld faded quickly as I raced past several crofts on the outskirts of the village of Reawick and then north. As I anxiously glanced over me shoulder for signs of Knut Blackbeard, I didn't notice that nearly all the sloops and smacks were sitting empty in the waves. And as I walked, me mind drifted to last September.

It had been an entire month with no smuggling. “Knut and I are off to meet with Mr. Marwick,” Daa had announced. “Private meetin'.”

“Then you'll be needin' me to carry your kishie,” John said hopefully. And since the hull of Gutcher's fourareen was leaking and there was no money to repair it, they set out on foot.

For years John had begged to see Lerwick for himself, which is why Daa and Knut agreed to take him along. It was from his stories of that journey that I first learned of the place.

“There are rows and rows of real houses—some two and three stories tall!” he explained when he returned several days later, his rivlins worn clear to his socks. “With corners so square you could cut yourself on the edge and slate roofs the color of the sky!”

He described beautifully carved doors, and streets where the homes were set so close together you could see your neighbor through the window next door.

“And the people! Some with skin as dark as night, and many so well fed they had belts as long as the reins on a harness. All speaking different languages—I couldna' understand a word!” He told of mariners filled with fire whiskey, carousing
in the streets at night. Of people bustling from shop to shop during the day buying everything imaginable. “Cakes, cheese, bread, books—even ready-made jackets and breeks! Why, you could buy jars of
red
and
green
paint!” His description of the lasses were hardest to believe. “No sallow faces or rough, worn hands—all plump, rosy-cheeked, and full of laughter and smiles,” he said, confessing that, when it was time for him to take a wife, it was there he would return.

But it was the tale of the shipwrecked American spy that most piqued me interest. How he'd been blown off course to an island just beyond the harbor during the war with the rebellious American Colonists, a trunk of gold ducats aboard his ship.

“It's been nearly sixty years,” I said. “Surely someone's found the treasure.”

“Don't think they haven't tried,” John said, eyes gleaming as he looked off into the distance. “Daa knows of a man who's been digging for it nearly all his life.”

As I staggered along, me empty stomach churned and me head began to grow dizzy.
Fill up with water
, I remembered Midder urging in those dark times when there had been no more food.
It will ease the hunger
. But as I veered from the path in search of a spring, a familiar voice made me nearly jump out of me skin.

“Peace be with thee, Christopher Robertson.”

There, slumped awkwardly on a rock by the path, was the
Reverend Frederick Sill, the minister of our parish and a man despised by me family more than nearly any other on the island.

“You're a long way from Culswick, are you not?” His crackling voice boomed so loudly I stood frozen in place.

He was Shetland born, the son of a powerful Lerwick minister, and had been educated in Edinburgh and had taken over our parish at the request of the Earl of Cummingsburgh himself. For nearly fifty years he had led with an iron fist, preaching sermons each week that droned on and on for three hours a sitting, sometimes even longer.

According to Gutcher, the reverend had at one time been a man of great stature, but for as long as I'd been alive his ancient body seemed as weathered and crooked as the driftwood stauf he grasped. His skin was gray and lifeless, as if it hadn't seen much sun of late, and the white around his green eyes was bloodshot with a yellow tinge and deeply set under lids of flaking, wrinkled skin. Wild strands of hair crawled from his nostrils and rough, scaly ears, and his hair and beard were pure white except for the yellow pipe stains above and below his lips.

He groaned as he stood and then steadied himself on his stauf. “Should you not be back with your Godless family tending to the destruction from the Lord Almighty's fierce gale?”

Panicked, I attempted to dart back to the path, only to feel his clawlike fingers grab fast to me arm. As leader of the Kirk,
Reverend Sill was also the person responsible for what he called “all matters of morality and discipline.”

“It is no secret your father's views of the Kirk,” he said, pulling me back toward a tall, woven reed basket we Shetlanders call a “kishie,” which sat beside him. “Prefers the mighty bishops of the Church of England to any
lowly
gathering of the Presbytery, does he not? And yet he is regularly in attendance at services.”

Me face grew hot as I tried to pull meself free.

“Aye—me Midder saw to it.” And she had, knowing as we all did that in times of desperation the Kirk was the only source of charity.

“Hmmph,” he grunted. “You would serve your Daa well to remind him that it is not Queen Victoria and her ways that we, the polluted worms of this earth, are to worship. Men are not as beasts! And when life as we know it comes to an end, it is the saints who will be taken from the sinners!”

I glared at him, unable to hold me tongue, remembering the shame and humiliation he had already cast upon me family.

“Me Midder was a Godly woman. Of that there is no doubt.”

“She disgraced the parish!” His faced turned crimson as he slowly enunciated each word.

I clenched me teeth, recalling the anguish in her kind, beautiful face as she stood, doing penance, before the parish each Sunday for four months, our neighbors' unforgiving eyes tearing her reputation to shreds. An ancient punishment the likes
of which no islander outside our parish had been asked to endure in decades. But so convinced was Reverend Sill that the Devil was lurking in our midst that he saw to it no curse went without the severest of punishments.

“Mrs. Peterson is a meddler and a gossip,” I blurted, the memory of that day two years before flooding back to me.

Reverend Sill raised an eyebrow, cocking his head ever so slightly to the right. “Perhaps. Nevertheless, for your Midder to curse her was Satan's work. The charge of blasphemy could not—would not—go without punishment. On this I have always been clear.”

I dropped me eyes, recalling how Midder lost her temper when Mrs. Peterson came nosing about, catching her planting on the Sabbath. How she knew she was late in sowing the cabbages, having spent the week weaving cloth to help cover the rent. Time was running out and she hadn't dared wait.

“I see what you're up to,” Mrs. Peterson had shouted, strutting down the path.

Me Midder, she was a patient woman—as patient as any I'd known. But that day she didn't hold back.

“May the Devil take your meddlin' soul from our croft!” she cried.

And that was all Agnes Peterson needed to hear.

By sundown she'd reported Midder to Reverend Sill, with the punishment for blasphemy and breaking the Sabbath set by morning.

“She was protecting me family,” I said, pulling free me arm and starting back to the path. “Seeing to it we had enough to eat! There's nothing un-Godly about that.”

He stared at me and shook his head. “Your temper gets the better of you, Christopher Robertson. Now, before you take your leave, I'll need to know where it is you are going.”

I hesitated, turning to catch his eye and wondering which would send me first to the land of Satan—lying to Reverend Sill or killing Mr. Peterson's ewe. “To Lerwick,” I muttered, knowing full well I could outrun him if he came after me. “On an errand for the family.”

The ancient man cocked his head, making a strange clicking noise with his tongue as he pondered me answer. “Most go by boat, round the heads,” he said, referring to Fitful Head and Sumburgh Head, the southern points of the island. Then he rubbed his shoulders as he studied me through the thick white eyebrows that climbed wildly in all directions and snagged his eyelashes when he blinked. “They say it's fastest.”

“Aye.” I nodded, thinking quickly. “But me Gutcher's fourareen's in need of repair. So they've sent me by land.”

He paused a moment, then cleared his throat again. “I, too, am headed to Lerwick.”

“Surely
you
are not traveling all that way by land?”

“Ah, but the Lord leaves me no choice,” he nearly shouted, face once again turning crimson. “Lad, have you not heard of my recent trip home from Edinburgh?”

“No, sir.” I sighed, looking longingly back to the path
and knowing full well his habit for long-winded responses. I was running out of time if I was ever to catch John before he boarded a ship for America, and by now Knut Blackbeard was surely on me trail.

The old man hammered his driftwood stauf into the ground. Then he stretched his arms wide to either side of his frail, cloaked frame, as I had seen him do so many times from the pulpit. “Just before Advent I crossed back from the Mainland, having, at eighty-four years of age, fulfilled my duties to the General Assembly of the Kirk in Edinburgh. Alas, the journey was on a ship full of sinful mariners and a captain whose language was so blasphemous that the Lord set about to teach them a lesson. We were but one day at sea when we were caught in crosswinds so wicked we were tossed about for three days, nearly to Foula Isle! I alone kneeled and prayed for redemption below deck, while four of those foul-languaged men were washed overboard! As the others grew close to despair and turned to me for solace, I reminded them that a man has no true loss until he loses his soul, and for that alone there is no reparation. That night God's will shook a rod over their heads and showed them his might!”

“Aye,” I said, impatiently tapping me foot. Then I glanced nervously back down the path for signs of Knut. “You made it home. Soli Deo Gloria. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm a bit pressed for time.” But as I turned back to the path, it was as if I hadn't spoken.

“Aye indeed!” Reverend Sill continued, his voice raised an
octave, as if to emphasize the importance of what was to follow. “We anchored safely in Lerwick the very next day, Sola Fide! And when I touched land and kissed the beloved ground, I vowed never to step foot on another ship.” Then he paused to massage his lower back and left buttock and glanced at his kishie. “I am expected in Lerwick by tomorrow for the monthly meeting of the Kirk elders. While I'm there, I intend to give charges of theft and blasphemy against Murdoch Bairnstrom, my patron Lord Cummingsburgh's agent. Instead of paying me his agreed-upon stipend, he has been seen in Lerwick spending the rents of his Lordship, carousing in the streets, and speaking foul language! This at a time when you, the pathetic sheep of a barren pasture, wait hungry in the fold!”

I laughed to meself that Reverend Sill, too, was in search of coins. “Doesn't the law require that Lord Cummingsburgh sees your stipend is paid?”