He Bought My Father's Name to Make Me Kneel, but I Was the One Who Cut His Chains novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Two Hundred
They came into the shop in twos and threes, wiping their boots, and stood among the meal barrels with their caps in their hands.
I came down the loft stair with my hair half pinned and Erlend behind me, and the whole shop went quiet.
Nobody on the Ness had ever seen a Garriock and an Isbister on the same stair.
The cooper stepped forward with the hat.
"We'll not keep you long, miss," he said. "Only we heard in the road you'd a book of your own."
"Who told you?"
"Hallgerd." He looked at the floor. "She said the day was come."
I looked across the shop.
Hallgerd sat at her high desk with her spectacles on, ink on her fingers, as she had sat for fifty years.
She did not meet my eye, and her mouth was folded very small.
"It's not much of a book," I said.
"It's two hundred and fourteen names," the cooper said. "She counted. The rest are at home with the bairns, but they sent us. We'd like to hear them."
"All of them?"
"If you'd read them."
I looked at Erlend.
He stood on the bottom step, in his wet coat, with his hands behind his back.
His face was set, and under it he looked like a man at the edge of a drop.
"Read them," he said.
I went up for the black notebook.
I read them standing at the counter, in the light from the window.
I read them as I had written them: the name, the year, the sum, and what I did.
The widow with the boat share, four pounds, 1881.
A fisherman's wife at the Wick, a winter of tea, eight shillings, my wages.
The old man from the south end, a pair of boots, a boat share, three winters.
I did not look up.
I heard a woman begin to cry, and then another.
When I came to a name, a hand would go up in the crowd, quietly, and a head nod.
A boy of twelve held his mother's skirt and looked at me as if I were a minister.
It took the better part of an hour.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of He Bought My Father's Name to Make Me Kneel, but I Was the One Who Cut His Chains are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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