In many ways, John and Billy Tweed were very much alike. A favor given, a favor returned. Everything in balance. Or so it seemed. For them, it was all about numbers.
"How do you do it?" I remember asking John years before, as we trudged home on the mossy path from the schoolhouse. "All that figurin' in your head?"
"Hah!" he laughed. "I've always had digits spinnin' round me brain. I guess all I needed was someone to show me what to do with 'em."
Me knack for reading and writing was nothing to his mastery of numbers. We all knew it, even back when he was no older than pesky Vic. Midder, being an educated woman, insisted we attend the school in Skeld run by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge. "Nothin' but a plot by the Kirk to brainwash me bairns," Daa muttered, but at her insistence we went just the same.
Our master, George Henry, was a thin, crooked figure with a shadow over his lip that made him never seem clean-shaven. He had come up from Edinburgh the year before to replace Mr. Smith, who fled the island the day after Angus Moncrieff knocked him senseless.
From the day they met, John was overjoyed by Mr. Henry's vast knowledge of mathematics, bookkeeping, and navigation. I watched quietly from the other side of the room as he devoured addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and pored over maps and even spherical trigonometry. If anyone could break us free from Marwick, it was John. But that night in Culswick Broch I waited nearly an hour, straining me eyes in the storm for the promised flashes of the lantern that never came.
Had I missed them? What had gone wrong?
When me teeth began rattling, me gansey and underclothes soaked through to me skin, I knew I could wait no more.
The cows hardly stirred as I pulled open the weathered door to the byre and felt me way to the faint silhouettes of Catherine and Victoria. They were still holding the orphaned lambs in their arms.
"Chris?" Catherine whispered as I crouched between them. "You must be daft to come back here!"
I peered across the byre to the crack of light coming through the unevenly planed boards of driftwood in the door to the cottage. "Mr. Peterson still inside?"
"Och, no." Catherine drew her finger to her lips. "Daa sent him off ages ago. But he's threatened to be back after the storm. He's looking for you."
"Soli Deo Gloria," I muttered, rubbing me brow. "I best get with Daa."
"No!" She grabbed tightly to me sleeve. "He's in one of his states."
"There's no helpin' it, Cath. We've something to take care of."
She pulled harder as I started to stand. "That's not the worst of it!" she said. "He's raging about 'cause he canna find the pouch!"
"Already knows it's gone, does he?" I asked.
"Climbed up the ladder and started fishing round the rafters soon as we gave him John's note."
"Note?"
"The one he wrote when he came back here," Victoria said. "Told Catherine not to read it, but she did-every word-just like you taught her. Oh, you're in a mighty heap of trouble, Christopher Robertson!"
I looked away, wanting nothing more than to have kept them from the truth about what I'd done to that ewe. "It's over, at least," I muttered, me face hot with shame. "Daa and I'll have her body stashed far below the mossy earth before Peterson gets back."
"Look! Me tooth is loose!" Victoria said, pushing her face before mine and opening her mouth wide.
"Not now, Vic!" Catherine swatted her on the shoulder. "Chris, it's not just the ewe that's gotten you in trouble."
"Are you a thief, Chris?" Victoria asked, gripping her lamb tightly as it struggled in her arms.
"Me?" I looked at her sweet face peering from under her mop of curls. As pesky as she was, I found it hard not to smile.
"John's note said you took the pouch," she went on, her hand stroking the velvet curls of the newborn lamb.
"I'm no thief, ya peerie haf-krak!" I cuffed her gently on the head. "'Twas your brother John who took the coins."
"See, Vic," Catherine whispered, "I knew John wasn't telling the truth. He's the Devil, that one! It's just like when the cheese went missing and he told Daa it was me who took it. Me backside still smarts from the thrashing."
"Cath," I said, kneeling before her, "what, exactly, did this note say?"
"Let's see." She closed her eyes as she stroked the soft brown head of her lamb. "Something like 'Dear Daa,' hmm, oh, yes-'I saw Christopher take your pouch from above the rafters in the byre after he snuffed out the Peterson ewe. He confided in me he was bound for Lerwick to seek passage to America.'"
I grabbed fast to her shoulders. "That's not funny, Cath! If you're playing with me now, you need to stop!"
"I'm n-n-not! Cross me heart," she stuttered-stunned, I think, by the urgency in me voice. "Vic, do you remember what came next?"
"Oh, yes!" Victoria whispered proudly. "'On my honor, I vow to catch him and bring back the coins if it is the last thing I do.' That was it! Oh, and don't forget he signed it, 'Your faithful son, John.'"
"You must have misread it!" I said, springing to me feet.
"You didn't do it, Chris, did you?" Catherine again grabbed the edge of me gansey. "You didn't take the pouch like John said?"
"'Course not!" I slammed me chapped fists on me thighs. "Would I be back here if I had?"
"Well, you better tell that to Daa," Victoria said, tucking her head behind her sister. "When he came down from that ladder he was smashing things this way and that!"
"Don't be daft, Vic," Catherine said. "Daa won't listen to him. Chris-we heard him tell Mr. Peterson you were the one who stole the ewe, and that you snuffed her out to cover yourself before he could stop you."
"Solus Christus!" I said, turning away from me sisters and pressing me face to me hands. Aye, me Daa could be cruel-but he'd never stooped to blaming me for his misdoings! And for John to write those words? It just couldn't be so.
Just then we heard the front door to the cottage burst open. "Well, there's no sign of him round the scattald," Daa's voice boomed through the wall. "By God, if John dunna bring that thieving dreep of a lad back here with that pouch by morning like he said he would, I'll send Knut Blackbeard to do the job!"
Catherine sprang to her feet, the squirming lamb baaing softly in her arms, and pushed me toward the door. "You've gotta leave! We heard Daa tell Gutcher that the note from John would be all the proof he would need to show your bad character to Sheriff Nicolson. If Mr. Peterson takes the matter to the court in Lerwick, Daa plans to use it to clear his name!"
"Run, Chris!" Victoria's wee voice quavered as she helped Catherine push me to the door.
I looked down at the two bony figures shivering in the shadows, the orphan lambs squirming in their arms. For all their bothering and teasing, it was all I could do to turn meself away. "Don't give yourself any trouble by tellin' Daa that you saw me tonight."
Then Catherine grabbed me hand, tears barely visible in the dark of the byre. "Will we see you again…ever?"
"Aye!" I said, suddenly wrapping me arms about their frail bodies. The lambs kicked wildly between us. They felt warm and soft. It was the first time I had ever hugged me sisters.
"But I've gotta get that pouch back." I slowly pulled away, remembering something Midder did the day she sent me off to school as I patted me heart. "While I'm gone, I'll keep you here."
And then, for the second time that night, I slipped out the door into the storm. This time, me life forever changed.
