Entry Island

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 What happened to Michaél

Extract from Sime’s diary

March, 1848

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.

From time to time the Scots organise a ceilidh. We have a fiddler among us, and one of the fellas has a squeeze box. No women, of course. Just drinking and gambling and some mad dancing once the booze starts to flow. Which is when the French join in. They’re pretty reticent at first, but once they get a drink in them they’re worse than the Scots.