Finally he gave up, letting the night wash over him, and tried to empty his mind of all thoughts, watching the ceiling, and wondering if he was any more than a pawn in some timeless game without start or finish.
At some point during the night, without any real sense of where it had come from, he remembered something that his father had been in the habit of quoting when it came to matters of the family and his Scottish roots. The blood is strong, Sime. The blood is strong. And that refrain remained with him through all the hours of darkness, endlessly repeating until the first grey light fell like dust from the sky, and he rose early hoping not to disturb the rest of the household.
He meant to leave Annie a note in the kitchen, but found her sitting in her dressing gown at the kitchen table nursing a mug of coffee. She was pale and looked up at him with penumbrous eyes. ‘I think I’ve caught your disease, Sime. Haven’t slept a wink all night.’ Her gaze dropped to the overnight bag in his hand. ‘Planning on leaving without saying goodbye?’
He placed his folded note on the table. ‘I was going to leave this for you.’ He smiled. ‘Didn’t want to disturb you.’
She grinned. ‘As if.’ Then, ‘I guess you didn’t sleep either.’
‘There was something going round and round my head all night, sis. Something Dad used to say. The blood is strong.’
Annie smiled. ‘Yes, I remember that.’
‘I never really understood what he meant, till now.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, we always knew we were Scottish, right? I mean, Mum’s family originally came from Scotland, too. But it never seemed to matter. It was just history. Like the stories from the diaries. Somehow I never really believed these were real people. It never occurred to me that we are who we are now because of them. That we only exist because of the hardship they survived, the courage it took just to stay alive.’
She gazed up at him with thoughtful eyes. ‘I always felt that connection, Sime.’
He shook his head. ‘I didn’t. I always felt, I don’t know, sort of dislocated. Not really part of anything. Not even my own family.’ He glanced at her self-consciously. ‘Until now. In those dreams, I felt Sime’s pain, sis. When I read those stories, I feel such empathy. And the ring …’ Almost unconsciously he ran the tips of the fingers of his left hand across the engraving in the carnelian. ‘It’s almost like touching him.’ He closed his eyes. ‘The blood is strong.’
When he opened them again he saw the love in her eyes. She stood up and took both his hands. ‘It is, Sime.’
‘I’m so sorry, Annie.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘For not loving you like I should. For never being the brother you deserved.’
She smiled sadly. ‘I’ve always loved you, Sime.’
He nodded acknowledgement. ‘Which is why you deserve better.’
She just shook her head, then glanced towards his bag. ‘Do you have the diaries?’
He nodded. ‘I want to read them, cover to cover. And sort out my head. Somehow I have to try and figure all this out.’
‘Don’t be a stranger, then.’
‘I won’t. I promise. I’ll be back first chance I get.’
Annie placed her mug carefully on the table and stood up. ‘I never asked you yesterday.’ She paused. ‘Did she do it? Kirsty Cowell. Did she kill her husband?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think she did.’
‘Then you have to do something about that.’
He nodded. ‘I do. But there’s someone I have to see here before I go.’
She waited until he had gone before she opened his note and read the three words he had written on it.
I love you.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The road was quiet as he turned on to Highway 108 east, just one or two trucks out early to make up time before the traffic got going. It cut like an arrow through the forest, and as he drove the sun came up over the trees to set their leaves alight. He had to lower his visor to avoid being blinded.
At the village of Gould he pulled off the road into a parking area in front of an old auberge. Next door to it was the Chalmers United Church built in 1892, a plain redbrick building surrounded by neatly kept lawns. There was not much left of the original village, just a few scattered houses set back from the old crossroads. Gone were the schools and churches that had sprung up through the nineteenth century. Most of the plots of land so painstakingly cleared by those early settlers had been reclaimed by the forest, almost all evidence that they had ever existed vanished for ever.
He stood and gazed across the woodland. Somewhere out there was the land that his ancestor had cleared.
Lingwick cemetery was about a hundred metres away on the other side of the road, raised up on a hill that looked out over the trees that smothered the eastern province. An elevated resting place for the dead of a far-off land.
The cemetery itself was immaculately kept. Sime walked up the grassy slope to its wrought-iron gates, their shadows extending down the hill to meet him in the early morning sunlight. He paused by the stone gateposts and read the inscription at his right hand. In recognition of the courage and integrity of the Presbyterian pioneers from the Island of Lewis, Scotland. This gate is dedicated to their memory.
The gravestones themselves were set in rows following the contour of the hill. Morrisons and Macleans. Macneils, Macritchies and Macdonalds. Macleods and Nicholsons. And there, in the shade of the forest that pressed in along the east side of the cemetery, was the weathered, lichen-stained headstone of Sime Mackenzie. Born March 18th, 1829, Isle of Lewis and Harris, Scotland. Died November 23rd, 1904. So he had lived to be seventy-five, and to see in the new century. He had given life to the woman who bore him his son, and seen it taken away. His love for the woman to whom he had been unable to keep the promise made on that tragic day on the banks of the River Clyde had never been fulfilled.
Sime felt an aching sense of sadness for him, for everything he had been through, for ending up here alone, laid for ever to rest in the earth of a foreign place so far from his home.
He knelt by the tombstone and placed both hands on the cool, rough stone, and touched the soul of his ancestor. Beneath his name was the inscription, Gus am bris an latha agus an teich na sgàilean.
‘Do you know what it means?’ The voice startled him, and Sime looked around to see a man standing a few paces away. A man in his forties, dark pony-tailed hair going grey around the hairline. He wore a collarless white shirt open at the neck beneath a tartan waistcoat. Black trousers folded over heavy boots.
Sime stood up. ‘No, I don’t.’
The man smiled. He said, ‘It means, Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away. Quite common on Hebridean graves.’
Sime regarded him with curiosity. ‘Are you Scottish?’
The man laughed. ‘Do I sound it? No, I’m as French as they come. My partner and I own the auberge across the way, but the history of this place is my obsession.’ He glanced down at his waistcoat. ‘As you can see.’ He smiled again. ‘I’ve even been to the Isle of Lewis myself in the company of some local historians. Smelled the peat smoke and tasted the guga.’ He reached out to shake Sime’s hand, then nodded towards the gravestone. ‘Some connection?’
‘My great-great-great-grandfather.’
‘Well, then, I’m even happier to meet you, monsieur. I have quite a collection of papers and memorabilia over at the auberge. Your ancestor was quite a local celebrity. I think I may even have a photograph of him.’