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.
“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 knows most of 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