Peter May - Entry Island

All the mischief was back in Michaél’s eyes and he could hardly contain his excitement. He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me outside, walking us briskly away from the Lazarettos towards the shore, anxious that no one should overhear us.

His voice was a hoarse whisper. ‘I’m getting off Grosse Île tonight.’

I was surprised. ‘How?’

He shook his head. ‘Don’t even ask. It’s costing an arm and a leg. And the guards’ll bloody shoot us if they see us. There’s a boat going to meet us on the north-east shore and take us over to the north bank of the St Lawrence. We can make our way west from there to Quebec City. Me and three others. All Irishmen.’ He paused. ‘But we might make room for a Scotsman if he wanted to come along.’

My heart was banging in my chest. A chance to escape. ‘I do,’ I said. ‘But I’ve got no money.’

‘You bloody Scots never do!’ he said. ‘But don’t worry about that. You can pay me back sometime. As long as you don’t mind travelling second class.’ And he grinned at me through his whiskers. ‘Are you in?’

I nodded.

Despite my desperation to get off this damned island, by late afternoon I was regretting my impulsive decision to go with Michaél and the Irish. I had promised Catrìona Macdonald that I would take care of her children. And although I told myself it was unfair of her to burden me with that responsibility I still felt guilty at abandoning them. So I decided to go to the hospital to speak to her myself.

It was my first visit to the hospital shed, and when I crossed the threshold I felt as if I had passed from one world to another, from hell on earth to hell below it.

It was long and dark, windows blanked to keep out the daylight. The smell was worse than on the boat. And having breathed God’s own clean air for three days it was all the harder to take. Beds were lined up side by side, with the narrowest of spaces between them. Just wooden frames with boards and filthy mattresses.

Nurses in dirty, stained and worn uniforms moved among the dying like angels of mercy, doing what they could to relieve pain and suffering. But they were little more than sanitation workers cleaning up in the wake of death. The strain was clear on pallid faces with deeply shadowed eyes. Even although the doctor had told me there was a reasonably high recovery rate, it seemed hard to believe that anyone could survive this place. The medical practitioners here wore long gowns and hats and face masks to protect them from the miasma of infection that permeated the very air they breathed.

I wanted to turn and go back out immediately. But I steeled myself. The very least I owed Catrìona Macdonald was an explanation. I stopped one of the nurses and asked which bed she was in. She lifted some charts hanging from the wall and riffled through several sheets, running her finger down the names. At length she stopped at one. ‘Ah, yes. Catrìona Macdonald. She died this morning.’

It was hot outside, the sun showing itself periodically through a broken sky. I stood gulping down fresh air and fighting mixed feelings. A part of me was relieved that I wouldn’t have to face her. Another part of me wanted to weep for the woman from whose loins I had torn life. And yet another part of me died a little bit for her children, and her baby who would never know her.

I found Michaél in Lazaretto No. 3, he and a little group of co-conspirators gathered around a table. My fellow escapees. ‘I need to talk to you,’ I said, and we went outside.

I suppose I must have had something of an aura of death around me, for he gave me an odd look. ‘What can I do for you, Scotsman?’

‘I need some money.’

He frowned. ‘What for?’

‘It’s a long story. I’ll pay you back when I can.’ I couldn’t tell him I needed it to buy off my conscience. But even in the short time that I have known him, I have realised that Michaél has a way of reading folk.

He looked at me for a long time. A gaze that penetrated my very soul, it seemed. Then he grinned and said, ‘What the hell. What we need we’ll fockin’ steal.’ And he dug into an inside jacket pocket and pulled out a small purse with its strings pulled tight and tied in a knot. He took my hand and pressed it into it. ‘Ten gold sovereigns in there. I hope they’re going to a good cause.’

I nodded open-mouthed, barely able to believe such generosity. ‘They are. But I don’t know that I can take this much.’

‘Take it!’ he bellowed. ‘And never ask where I got it. The bloody things are far too heavy anyway. And besides, they’ve got the head of the fockin’ English queen on them. No self-respecting Irishman would be found dead with those in his pocket.’

I went straight to the Mackinnon family who had been looking after Catrìona’s children when I wasn’t there. I was blunt with them. Told them that Catrìona was dead and that I was leaving tonight. I produced the coins and laid them out on the table, and said this was to pay for the children’s keep. They had three children of their own already, but the husband and wife both looked at the money with eyes like saucers. It was more than either of them had ever seen. Or me, for that matter. And for a moment I wondered how on earth I was ever going to pay Michaél back.

The children themselves took the news of their mother’s death in a strangely solemn silence. I wondered if perhaps they had just seen so much of it that death no longer registered They were more upset to learn that I was leaving. They clung to me, silent tears running down their cheeks, little hands clutching my jacket. And I held them both, fighting hard not to weep myself, and wondered how I could be so selfish.

I kissed them, then tore myself free to stand and take the baby in my arms, just as I had that night on the ship. She looked up at me, almost as if she knew that she would never see me again, and gripped my thumb with tiny fingers, such focus in those little eyes staring into mine. I kissed her forehead and whispered, ‘Stay safe, little one.’ And she smiled.

I can hardly write as I squat here in the dirt, shaking from the cold and wet, sitting as close to the flames as I dare, to warm my bones and light my pages. Michaél watches me with curiosity in his pale eyes. He has no understanding of this compunction I have to put my life on paper. Somehow in these last two months it has become the only thing that gives my existence any point.

I can see the slow movement of the river through the trees below us where we shelter from the rain and the cold beneath this overhang of rock. And somewhere across the water, unseen, lie the horrors of Grosse Île. It hardly seems possible that it is less than two hours since we left the Lazarettos under cover of darkness, and that only Michaél and I remain alive.

There were five of us altogether. Earlier the sky had been clear, but by the time we left after midnight it had clouded over and was threatening rain. The dark seemed impenetrable.

We moved within touching distance of each other, away from the huts, and across the wide, flat, boggy ground that lay between the Lazarettos and the village. It was just possible to see the darker shadow of the tree-covered escarpment that rose away through tangling briar towards the north side of the island. That part of it had never been settled and we knew it would be difficult terrain to negotiate.

We were almost there when God intervened, and a great hole opened up in the sky to let moonlight flood down across Grosse Île. For a moment it was like midday, and there we were, caught in the full glare of the light for anyone to see. And seen we were. By the guards on the edge of the village. A shout went up, voices were raised and a shot rang out in the dark.

We ran for our lives, seeking the cover of the trees, and once there went ploughing through briar and undergrowth that shredded our clothes and skin. Climbing. Up over rock and tree roots, stumbling and tripping, fuelled by panic.