The Runaway's Gold Read Online Free PDF Page B

be needed. Needed by him.
    Rain dripped into me eyes as I shifted weight from one foot to the other. In me head Daa’s voice screamed, “
Snuff—her—out!”
    â€œTry and tell that to the Sheriff Court in Lerwick,” John said, laughing. “Christopher Robertson, when will you learn? Daa has never cared for anyone above himself. Never.”
    â€œHe loved our Midder.” The words tumbled out before I could stop them. I thought of the way Daa had looked at herfrom across the room. How he had so often walked past her as she stood at the fire, letting his hand touch her cheek ever so lightly.
    â€œHah! Did you even see him shed a tear the night she and wee Michael took their last breath? Ever see him visit her grave?”
    I thought of that endless night. Of him sitting before her, his eyes vacant as her chest lay still. How he had slowly risen to his feet and walked out the door, gone for days without so much as a word.
    â€œThe man wasn’t about to commit a crime so dark himself!” John continued. “Not a tenth-generation ‘Robertson,’ all convinced the entire island owes him their firstborn. The same man who talked his best friend, Knut Blackbeard, into spendin’ six months in prison for the crime
he
committed! Certainly not when he could get some other luckless soul—his youngest son no less—to do the deed.”
    It was then, as I stared into me beloved brother’s darting hazel eyes—the eyes I had grown to trust above all others since the passing of William—that I remembered something me Midder had said when I was just a wee boy of six or seven, but had never forgotten.
    â€œChristopher,” she had said, in a hushed tone, while we were planting cabbages, “take care with your brother John.”
    She had looked down as she spoke, working the earth with red, chapped hands, never meeting me eyes with hers. “For I fear,” she continued, and then hesitated, “there are times when his honor is not as it should be.”
    Midder wit
we called it. Words of truth passed down by those women much wiser than we. I remembered looking at the soft skin of her cheeks and the wisps of reddish-blond hair blowing across her eyes, puzzled by what had prompted her to say such a thing about the older brother I idolized. Not long afterward some of our butter and oat stores had gone missing, and I wondered if perhaps John had been responsible. But when, a few days later, I found a time when me Midder and I were alone and asked what she had meant, she quickly shook her head.
    She looked first left and then right, her cheeks turning ashen. “Never would I have said such a thing about me own sweet bairn!”
    From that day on she took great pains never to be alone with me, as if fearful I’d ask again. As if fearful of betraying the son she adored. And in the last moments before her heart stopped beating the night she failed in giving birth to wee Michael, it was John’s hand she clutched, not mine, pressing it close to her heaving chest while I stood stiffly at her side. As I hovered silently, frozen in place, blackness and despair seeping into me heart when we knew all hope of saving her was gone, I listened in agony as John told her he loved her and tenderly stroked her fevered brow.
    The rain on John’s face shimmered as another wretched branch of lightning ripped through the sky. I glanced suddenly at the pouch. “And what’s to keep
you
from Lerwick Prison?” I asked.
    He laughed, playfully pressing the wee sack of coins to his cheek. “Oh, dunna worry about me. I haven’t stolen anything. Only borrowing for a spell. The Ol’ Cod doesn’t even know it’s missing.”
    â€œHe’ll find out, soon enough.”
    â€œAye. But by then I’ll be long gone. From what I hear, an English schooner was blown off course last night near Skeld Voe. On its way back from Bergen. Loaded with