Grinning, Touch reached for the pen, and Carrot and I began discussing how tall it should be, how large a rock it should throw, how we should place the counterweight. We searched Mr. Lincoln’s shelves, pulling down book after book, studying illustrations of Roman siege engines and of the attack on Rhodes. Carrot and I talked, argued, tried to convince each other; and then suddenly, without consulting either of us, Touch began drawing. It was magical, watching the design flow from his pen. Soon Carrot and I had stopped arguing and we were building on each other’s ideas, and as Touch drew he added his own ideas, more elegant than either Carrot’s or mine, and we laughed and pointed and slapped each other on the back, and though I did not notice Mr. Lincoln or his expression, I have no doubt that he was leaning back in his chair, satisfied.
None of us would have believed we could do it. It took us weeks, from scouring the wood for the right trees, to sawing and edging the wood, and then putting the whole thing together. But by the end of July we had the machine built, and Mr. Lincoln even came outside to witness the first trial. It was, admittedly, a weak attempt, but after that failure we went back to work with renewed energy, rebuilding the machine until we had cured all its defects. Again we brought Mr. Lincoln outside. We mounted a rock the size of a cannonball into the bucket. It took all three of us to pull down the bucket, but when we released it, the rock sailed directly at the target, and even Mr. Lincoln joined in our cheers. We could not have been more excited if we had stormed Oporto ourselves.
That first Christmas, I was again left to my own devices for ten days.Ten days. Alone, I wandered the rime-covered fields and moors; I poked a stick to break the ice over a slow-moving stream; I helped North feed and brush the dilapidated horse; I sat on the floor in a patch of sun and leafed through Mr. Lincoln’s books. Sometimes I closed my eyes and remembered Christmas at Thornfield-Hall. My father had never made much of the holiday, but he did see to having a tree set up in the Great Hall, and Mrs. Knox oversaw the decorating, and all the cottagers came on Christmas Eve to receive gifts and to pull at their forelocks in acknowledgment. And I would receive a gift or two, and all the household had a grand dinner of ham and plum pudding. I wondered what Christmas would be like for my father and brother in Jamaica; if there would be a palm for a tree and if one could find plums on the island.
Although Athena did not cook ham on Christmas Day, at least she allowed me for once to eat my dinner of pork roast in the kitchen with her and North. Still, I longed for the others to return. Mr. Lincoln again came back first, with a brief New Year’s greeting before he disappeared into his room to read whatever letters had come in his absence. I waited by the window for Touch and greeted him with open arms, and almost immediately I talked him into drawing pictures: a wicked pirate with a huge curved sword and hair more straggly than mine, and a grisly sea monster, and when we trooped up to bed, I put my arm across his shoulders and thought that if I had had a younger brother, I would have wanted him to be just like Touch.
But without Carrot, we felt incomplete. When he did come back the next day, he was laughing and joking and going on and on as if he’d had no thought for how lonely I had been without him and Touch. The more he carried on, the angrier I grew at his good humor in light of my abandonment until, without thinking, I punched him in the stomach. Astonished, he stared at me, and not knowing what else to do, I gave him another, harder, blow. He grabbed my arms to stop me, but I could not be stopped, yelling incomprehensible words and crying at the same time, until Mr. Lincoln came out of his room, took one look, and bellowed, “Stop!”
That brought me to my senses at last, and I looked up at Carrot and he looked down at me and said, simply, “I missed you, too, Jam.”
I put my arms around him in relief, and Carrot pulled Touch over, and we all three stood in the middle of the room, arms around one another. Mr. Lincoln retreated to his own chamber. None of us ever spoke of my outburst, and with grit and determination I handled the subsequent holidays more stoically.
***
In the spring, Mr. Lincoln brought out the maps of Gaul, and we began speaking Latin for the Gallic Wars. “In every battle the eyes are the first to be conquered,” Tacitus wrote. The most important virtue in battle is to visually intimidate the enemy. It was a lesson I would not soon forget.
Human nature is motivated by fear, according to Thucydides. In our day we do it with battalions of smartly dressed soldiers, but in more primitive times it was often done with a ferocious appearance. Caesar reported that the early Britons painted themselves dark blue to attain a more intimidating aspect, and so, for us, blue became the color for the British tribes.
Mr. Lincoln showed us drawings of woad and sent us out into the countryside to gather leaves to make blue dye. We had a hellish time finding the right plant, and in fact we returned to the cottage twice with the wrong thing. Late in the day, we found the distinctive yellow flowers and bent to our task as quickly as possible. Running home, my arms full of woad, I stumbled over a tussock and fell, twisting my foot and feeling my ankle give way. Carrot, who was ahead as usual, ran on, but Touch came up behind me, his face a picture of concern.
Kneeling beside me, he asked, “Is it broken?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but it hurts.”
He touched my ankle gently, and I winced in pain. “Can you walk if I help you?” he asked.
It took a deal of negotiating for the two of us to walk back to the cottage together, still clinging to our precious harvest. I was half again his size and weight, and I could tell he could barely keep upright himself with me leaning so heavily on him, but we managed, and when we returned, Athena fashioned a poultice for my ankle. Carrot and Touch babied me and brought me books, and Touch drew pictures of Balboa sighting the Pacific Ocean for the first time.
That reminded me that we had never learned to swim, and Carrot promised that as soon as my ankle was healed we would go to the little nearby lake and teach each other. Touch grimaced at that, and when Carrot was distracted whispered that I might have to save him, for he was afraid of water. I nodded and told him never to worry; I would take care of him as he had taken care of me. It occurred to me then, in his secret admission, that a kind boy like Touch should not have been learning the arts of war. He should have been poring over the philosophers and reading the sonnets of Shakespeare and drawing whatever he was able to conjure in his mind. And, to my great loss, it turned out that his father, the vicar, thought so too.
The day after the woad-gathering episode, Mr. Lincoln led us through the complicated procedure of making the blue dye, which involved, to our boyish delight, the fermentation of the crushed leaves in human urine. We managed to make enough pigment to color ourselves, and Carrot and Touch then crept through the high grass behind the cottage, daring Roman legions to attack. It was great fun for them, and even I, sitting on a bench at the doorstep, felt the thrill of adventure, but it all ended unhappily. At home that next Saturday, Touch, unthinking, let slip the adventures of the previous week. Unfortunately, the vicar did not think that wandering the countryside painted in urine, pretending to be heathen Picts, was ideal for his son’s education. Touch did not return the next day; instead, a note arrived on Monday stating that William would no longer be studying at Black Hill.
I was stunned. Of the three of us, Carrot was the leader, always. But Touch—Touch had seemed almost a part of me, as if, indeed, he really was my younger brother. I had taken him for granted all those months, as if he would always be there. How often had I watched him go home each Saturday, wishing I could go home with him. Carrot, who noticed my distress, was more philosophical. “You have to be ready for that, Jam. There is no one you cannot lose, no one other than yourself who can make you the man you will become. And”—here he looked me meaningfully in the eye—“there is no one who can hurt you, if you do not allow it.”
I gazed at him—more than a head taller than I, his ruddy face and his mouth set in a determined line—and I wished I could be like that, and I decided I would try. But every night, with just Carrot and me, I still missed Touch and his stories tremendously.
Some time later, as the first chills of autumn turned the leaves to yellow, a new boy arrived. He was the same age as Carrot, though he was not nearly as tall, but what he lacked in height he made up for in weight. Mr. Lincoln named him Pies, because he could—and did—eat four or five of Athena’s meat pies at one sitting, until Mr. Lincoln put a stop to it. Pies rarely made excursions outside unless Mr. Lincoln forced him to, but some winter days it was so cold that even Carrot and I remained indoors. Pies’ talents, if he had any, lay in the province of food, and thenceforth Mr. Lincoln made him the quartermaster, tasking him with calculating the provisions for whatever army or whatever naval vessel we were discussing at the time.
Another boy came that next spring, a thin boy whose face was pockmarked and whose teeth stuck out in what seemed like a random arrangement, so that his lips did not close over them, and who at first hung his head and stared at the floor and did not say anything, no matter what Mr. Lincoln said or did. He climbed into bed with us that first night, Pies having taken over the cot from the start, and he turned his back to us. Almost immediately the mattress began to shake gently with his sobs.
“It does no good to cry,” Carrot said.
“Maybe he’s lonely,” I whispered.
“Everybody gets lonely, Jam,” Carrot retorted. Then he repeated himself in a louder voice, “Everybody gets lonely. You have to play the cards you were dealt.”
The shaking of the mattress stopped and in the silence I could hear the boy’s breathing. “Does he beat us?” he asked softly after a few moments.
“Mr. Lincoln?” I asked, astonished.
“Of course not,” Carrot said. “What kind of place do you think this is?”
“The last place vey did. Mr. Bertrand and his wife boaf.”
I felt the room pressing in on me.
“For what?” Carrot asked.
