He Bought My Father's Name to Make Me Kneel, but I Was the One Who Cut His Chains novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: What He Said

"In the end," Erlend said.

He said it very quietly, the way a man reads a figure back to check it.

Torvald spread his soft hands on the cloth.

"It was sixty pounds, brother. Sixty pounds, and the old man was dying. Father could not have worked the croft another winter."

"He died on the hill," Erlend said.

"He was going to die anyway."

Nobody at the table breathed.

My father had slid down into a chair with his face in his cap.

Hallgerd stood by the box with her fingers on the torn page, and her mouth moved without a sound.

"I owed a man at Lerwick forty-one pounds," Torvald said. "He had a cousin with a knife."

He sighed.

"I was twenty-one, Erlend. I thought I would sell the croft, pay the man, and come back in the spring with the rest."

"The gale came on the ninth."

"The gale came on the ninth," Torvald agreed, and he sighed. "I did not make the weather."

"You were not at the croft."

"I was at Lerwick, drunk, in a bed I'd paid for with their money," Torvald said, and smiled a little. "I heard of it on the Tuesday."

I felt sick.

I looked at Erlend's hands, because I could not look at his face.

They hung at his sides, open, and they were perfectly still.

"You came to Leith," Erlend said. "You came for me at the quay."

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