He Bought My Father's Name to Make Me Kneel, but I Was the One Who Cut His Chains novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: The Fair
Erlend's POV
The Lerwick shore on the morning of the herring fair was a mile of tents and boats and smoke.
I came along it at eight with my gloves in my pocket and my hands bare.
I had not worn the gloves since the dining room.
Men looked at the hands, and then at my face, and then looked away.
They had known me fourteen years and never once seen the skin of my wrist.
I did not hide it.
The boats lay drawn up on the shingle in rows, with the fleet's flags at the mastheads.
On the flat above the tideline the fair was being built.
There was a platform of herring barrels and planks for the sheriff, and a long trestle for the sales.
An ox turned on a spit over a pit of peat.
At the far end, on a bare stretch of shingle, a great pile of driftwood and broken staves was stacked for the bonfire.
Torvald's tent stood by itself at the head of the trestle, a fine green canvas one with a flag.
He sat outside it on a camp chair with his legs crossed.
The iron box stood on a table at his elbow, and he drank tea from a china cup.
He saw me come, and lifted the cup.
"Brother!" he said. "You're early."
I stopped five yards off.
I had thought on the way what I would do.
I had thought of the many ways my hands would be glad to do it.
I had put them in my pockets at the pier.
Then I had taken them out again and let them hang.
"I've come to speak," I said.
"Then speak. There's tea," Torvald said.
"I'll stand," I said.
"As you like," he said.
Behind him, in the shadow of a boat, a man in a black coat was mending a net he did not seem to need to mend.
I knew the coat.
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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