He Bought My Father's Name to Make Me Kneel, but I Was the One Who Cut His Chains novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: The Herring Fair
Danika's POV
By noon there were two thousand people on the Lerwick shore.
I had never seen so many in one place.
They came down from the town and over from the islands in every kind of boat, and they stood along the shingle in their Sunday blacks with children on their shoulders, and the smoke of the ox roast went up straight in the windless air.
The Ness men stood together at the front, near the platform.
They had come across in nine boats.
The cooper had his arms folded, and the old man from the south end leaned on a stick, and every crofter I had ever written in a book stood in a row with his wife beside him and his cap on his chest.
I stood at the foot of the platform steps with my father's brass key round my neck.
My father stood beside me.
He had come out of the Lerwick cell in March a smaller man than he went in, and he had put on his clean collar and not touched the bottle since the evening before.
His hands shook, and he kept them in his coat.
Hallgerd was on my other side, in her brown shawl, upright as a post.
The sheriff stood on the platform in his black coat and his chain, with the procurator fiscal at his elbow.
Torvald sat at a table at the front of the boards with the iron box before him, and the whole shore could see his smile.
He had put on a flower.
I do not think he believed it would go as it did.
I think he thought, as he had thought all his life, that a smooth word would carry him through any room.
The sheriff lifted a hand, and the noise went down.
"The sale of the late Isbister estate's remaining paper," the sheriff said, "is to be conducted by Mr Garriock, as agent for the creditors."
Torvald stood.
He bowed to the crowd.
"Friends," he said warmly, in the voice that had carved the mutton at the Hall. "I'll not keep you from the ox. There is one lot, a single leaf of paper, and I am told there is a gentleman who wishes to bid."
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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