The door opened and Aucoin poked his head in. ‘Ah, you’re awake. Good. How are you feeling?’
Sime nodded. ‘Okay.’ He wanted to shout I’ve been sleeping. I feel fucking great!
‘That’s the helicopter away with Aitkens now. They’ll probably medevac him out to Quebec City. Helluva job getting him off those cliffs in one piece.’
‘Is he …?’
‘He’s going to live, yes. Live to regret it, too.’
‘You got the knife? I laid it on a chair in the house.’
Aucoin smiled. ‘Relax. We got the knife.’
‘The pathologist should be able to match it up to Cowell’s wounds. Might even still be traces of blood where the blade is sunk in the haft.’
‘We’ll find out soon enough. It’ll go off to Montreal this morning.’ He nodded towards a pile of clothes draped over an armchair. ‘The nurse put your stuff through her tumble-dryer.’ He grinned. ‘Even washed your boxers for you. I didn’t want to wake you before now. But the ferry leaves shortly.’
When he went out again Sime sat up, and Aitkens’s words on the cliffs from the night before came back to him. He looked at his hand, then worked the signet ring over his swollen knuckle with some difficulty to turn it towards the light so that he could see inside it. And there, around the inside of the band, almost erased by more than a century and a half of wearing, were the words, Sto pro veritate: I stand for truth.
When he stepped out onto the porch he felt how the wind had dropped. The storm had passed, and a watery autumn sun played behind gold-lined cumulus that bubbled up across the sky, shining in patches of precious liquid across a sea that was only now beginning to calm itself after the rage of the night before.
His legs felt shaky as he climbed down the steps and slipped into the back seat of the car that would drive them down to the harbour.
As they drove down the hill the island seemed to unravel slowly on the other side of his window, like a reel of film. Past the épicerie, and the piles of lobster creels, and the church with its giant cross casting a long shadow over the graveyard. He thought he caught a glimpse of Kirsty Guthrie’s headstone, but wasn’t sure, and it was gone in a moment.
On the ferry he climbed up on to the top deck and stood at the stern to watch Entry Island lose its features and turn to silhouette against the radiance of the sun rising behind it. Its shadow reached out across the water so that he felt he could almost touch it. His shoulder was aching, and would no doubt require further attention, but he was hardly aware of it.
A patrol car met them at the quay on Cap aux Meules. It was less than a ten-minute drive to the Sûreté. The sun was higher in the sky now, and the wind had dropped to a whisper. It was going to be a fine fall day. When they stepped into the hall, Aucoin caught his arm. ‘I guess you’ll want to do this?’ he said. He was clearly embarrassed and wanted no part of it. Sime nodded.
Kirsty looked up as he came into her cell. She had a jacket on over her T-shirt, all her belongings packed into a sports holdall that someone in the station must have loaned her. Her hair was not dry yet after her shower, and hung in damp, dark strands over her shoulders. She stood up. ‘You’re early. I thought the flight wasn’t until midday.’
He wanted to put his arms around her and tell her it was over. But all he said was, ‘They’re dropping the charges.’
He saw the shock on her face. ‘How? Why?’
‘We’ve got your husband’s killer in custody.’
She stared at him in disbelief, and it was several moments before she found her voice. ‘Who?’
He hesitated. ‘Your cousin Jack.’
She turned deathly pale. ‘Jack? Are you sure?’
He nodded. ‘Let’s go and get a coffee, Kirsty. And if you’ll give me the time, I’ve got a very long story to tell you.’
EPILOGUE
Sime followed the path back up from the shingle shore, between the remains of the blackhouses that had once made up the village of Baile Mhanais.
How foolish had Jack Aitkens been to imagine that he could inherit any of this? Not just the money, but the history, the lives lived and lost. Even had his claim for the inheritance been upheld, what might have seemed a fortune a hundred and fifty years ago was only worth a fraction of that now. Certainly not worth killing or dying for. Or spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair in a prison cell.
The wind tugged at his hair, and sunlight spilled down the hillside, the shadows of clouds chasing it across the ruins of the old settlement. He wondered in which of these houses his ancestor had grown up. Where his mother had given birth to him and his sisters. Where his father had died, shot to death as he tried to feed them.
It was hard to picture it the way it had been in his dream. As he had seen it in the paintings. Constables beating the villagers to the ground, men setting roofs on fire. All that remained were the ghosts of memories, and the endless wind whistling among the ruins.
At the top of the village, he stopped and looked up. Kirsty was standing on the hill by the remains of the old sheep fank, just as Ciorstaidh had done before her. Her hair blowing out behind her in the wind. It was impossible now for him to separate the two. Almost equally difficult to draw a line between himself and his ancestor. This was not only a pilgrimage to their past, but a journey in search of a future. For him an escape from a life barely lived. For her, release from the prison that had been Entry Island.
She waved, and he climbed the hill to feel the radiance of those blue eyes light up his life. She said, ‘The standing stones are over there. At the far side of the beach.’
He smiled. ‘Let’s take a look, then.’ They began their descent towards the beach and he took her hand to steady her as she almost stumbled over the uneven ground.
And he wondered if it had always been his destiny to keep the promise that the young Sime Mackenzie had made so long ago. And if he and Kirsty were somehow meant to fulfil the love that their ancestors never could. Only if you believed in destiny, he thought. Or fate. And Sime had never been quite sure that he believed in either.
POSTSCRIPT
I sit writing this tonight with fear in my heart. It is my first entry since arriving at the lumber camp four months ago. There has been no time to keep a record. Even if there had been, there is no privacy here, and anyway I’ve had little inclination.
We live in long sheds that make me think of the Lazarettos on Grosse Île, sleeping on two tiers of bunk beds that range along opposite walls. You can’t leave money or personal belongings here. Nothing is safe. You carry everything of value with you at all times.
In the time we have been here we have worked, eaten and slept. It is all we have done. Long, hard, ball-busting days felling and stripping trees, dragging them with teams of horses to the Gatineau River. For the moment the logs sit out on the ice. Great mountains of them. But in the spring the melting iceflows will carry them downstream to the big commercial sawmills at Quebec City.
They feed us well enough, at long tables like animal troughs. They need to fill our bellies to fuel the work we do. It is relentless, and the only day we have to ourselves is the Sabbath. A few of us who hail from the islands gather round on Sundays while I read from the Gaelic bible and we sing our psalms. The French think we are mad. An irreligious lot, they are. Catholics, of course.
The company provides alcohol, too. Their way of keeping us happy. But you daren’t drink too much during the week, or you’re not fit for working the next day. So Saturday night is the night for drinking. And pretty wild it can get sometimes, too.