“For anyfing. For not having clean cloves, but it’s hard to get vem clean in such icy water and wifout soap. For eating more van our share. For asking to go to the privy in the middle of a lesson. For shivering in the cold; for not knowing an answer to a question.”
“He doesn’t beat us,” I assured him. “No matter what, he doesn’t.”
Carrot laughed. “He sits in his chair from the moment he gets out of bed in the morning until the moment he goes back at night. He hasn’t the energy to beat anyone.”
“He’s not that kind of man,” I said.
“Well, ven, what kind is he?” the boy asked.
There was a silence while Carrot and I considered that. “He knows what boys like,” Carrot said after a while.
“He knowsmostof what boys like,” I amended.
The boy turned over onto his back, and I could imagine him staring at the ceiling.
“You’ll be all right,” I said.
But he was not. He was the most fearful person I had ever met—or have since. Mr. Lincoln called him “Mouse,” and perhaps it was not the kindest name, but it was not the worst he could have chosen. Despite our assurances, Mouse was terrified of doing something wrong, of being punished, of being sent away. But in the end, he went on his own, barely three months after he had come.
***
For a while after Touch left, he wrote us occasional letters, Mr. Lincoln reading them briskly after North had brought the mail. I would have liked to see them for myself, but Mr. Lincoln considered them his own property and kept them in his room. I responded every time nevertheless, asking each time for a return letter to be sent in my own name, but perhaps Touch never really understood how different life at Black Hill was without him. He was busy in his own world of family and his new tutor, who came to the vicarage and taught both boys, and then stayed on later to lecture Touch in Greek.Greek?I had asked once, and Mr. Lincoln gave me a scowl and muttered that a vicar needed to know the language so that he could read the Bible as God had written it. But I never knew whether he was angry because he hadn’t the skill to teach Greek well enough to suit Touch’s father or if it was because he did not think Touch suited to be a vicar.
In the months and years after Touch’s departure, boys came and went, usually three or four of us with Mr. Lincoln at any one time, always someone new trying to learn the languages I now spoke nearly fluently, or trying to understand the orders of battle or to compute the range of a cannon, but there was never anyone new with whom I felt as close as I had with Touch. Nor was there anyone who seemed more like an older brother—in all kinds of ways—than Carrot. And there was also never anyone, other than I, who never went home for any holiday.
Chapter 5
Carrot left the year I turned twelve. He was fifteen then, and he departed in high glee at the prospect of coming under his father’s care at last. I could not imagine how life at Black Hill would be without him. I had never gotten over the loss of Touch, and now, with Carrot gone as well, I felt I was really on my own.
By that time, I had spent a third of my life at Black Hill, and much more time with Mr. Lincoln than I had ever spent with any member of my own family. I was thoroughly used to his ways. He could be stern, but occasionally one could catch a knowing glance or a proud, subtle smile when one had done an especially good job.
Perhaps because I had lost both Touch and Carrot, it was in that year that I became more interested in modern, everyday life, as opposed to historic battles and heroes and explorations. Sometimes I managed to get my hands on a newspaper of Mr. Lincoln’s before he removed it to the forbidden territory of his own room. He did not encourage us to read newspapers; it was as if there was no reason for us to study a subject that did not appear in a book. Nevertheless, he answered my questions the few times I put one to him, more generously if he could illustrate his response with a map. Most often, as he had done on my very first day, he would send me to his library to discover the information for myself. But I was intensely curious to know what real life was like for real people in our modern times, for I was beginning to understand that I had never actually experienced such a thing.
With Carrot gone, the fun of replaying battles had dimmed for me—as I suspect it sometimes did even for Mr. Lincoln—so it was not with a great deal of disappointment that I greeted the letter that arrived on my thirteenth birthday. I had almost forgotten the significance of the date, it never having been celebrated in my time at Black Hill. But at tea that evening Mr. Lincoln handed me an envelope. It had been opened already, yet Mr. Lincoln gave me the rare courtesy of letting me read it for myself:
Son:
You are now thirteen years of age—old enough to learn more of the world. Accordingly, on 3 April you shall arrive at the premises of Mr. John Wilson of Maysbeck. He shall take you under his wing and teach you all you need to know about being a man.
I expect that you will give a good account of yourself and will not embarrass me in your situation and your dealings with Mr. Wilson.
I have directed Mr. Lincoln to entrust you with 1 guinea, which should see you to Mr. Wilson’s establishment. Return what is left to Mr. Wilson, and give him an accounting of what you have spent.
George Howell Rochester, Esq.
Maysbeck.Not Thornfield. I had only a vague idea where Maysbeck was, but at least, by then, I well knew how to find out. Mr. Lincoln’s gazetteer showed it to be a town of fair size, but of no particular distinction. Still, it was exciting—exactly what I had hoped for, because I would actually be out in the world. It was as if my father, all those miles away in Jamaica, or wherever he was, had read my mind, and, because of that, I felt an affinity for him that I had rarely experienced before, and I became certain that the next step would be joining Rowland and my father in Jamaica.
“It will be a new kind of life for you, Jamaica,” Mr. Lincoln said. “I trust that you will make the most of it.”
“I will try to, sir. My father is counting on it.”
“Yes, he is indeed,” he said, “and it is best that you keep that in mind.”
He turned away and rose from the table with his usual difficulty, to go to his room. It was a departure from his normal evening activity to go to his room so early, and in my childish self-absorption I imagined he was devastated to have me leave. I glanced around the table at the others: Pox, who had come to us a month before, and who had yet to accomplish even the shortest sentence in French; Buck, who was large and clumsy, and whose smile was infectious; Tip, who was small and quick of mind and body. He would be the next leader of the boys when I left. That thought caught me up—it was true: I had, almost without realizing, become the leader after Carrot’s departure. But I would be going to a new place now, and I would be the new boy and I would have to learn my way around the others, as well as learning the ways of a new tutor.
The next morning at breakfast, Mr. Lincoln behaved to me as if nothing had changed, as if there had been no letter from my father, no impending departure. He rolled out the map of Russia and placed the tokens for the Battle of Borodino, a battle I had enacted more times than I cared to think about, and it was clear that his thoughts were not of me on that day, but on the boys who would be there after I left.
At tea I broached the subject that had teased me all day. “Sir,” I said.
