Peter May: Entry Island

There was a huge amount of blood soaking into the blanket across his chest and staining my hands red. I wiped them off on his pillow and put away my knife, then stood to look down on his ugly, lifeless face before turning away to lose myself in the darkness.

Debt paid.

I have walked the horse through the night to put as much distance between the camp and myself as possible before they find the bastard. But I have stopped here, somewhere deep in the forest, now that first light has come. Not just to rest the horse, but to light a fire and warm my bones. I have never felt this cold, ever, and it is hard to hold my pen without my fingers trembling.

But I think the cold comes from inside, from the Arctic wastes that are my soul. I would never have believed it possible that I could take the life of another human being in cold blood. But cold it was, and calculated, and the only thing I regret is that Michaél is no longer with me.

Friday, 31st March

I arrived home this morning. Rode through the village just before dawn, with Michaél over the back of my horse. He was frozen solid.

The cabin was bleak and cold when I got there, but pretty much as we had left it. I don’t think anyone has been in it during the four months we have been away. There’s nothing to steal anyway. The notice advertising jobs with the East Canada Lumber Company was lying on the table where Michael had left it, and I looked at it with a kind of rage inside me. That fate should have dealt us such a tragic hand. I could remember him returning with it from the Gould village store. Had he not chanced upon it that day and suggested it as a way of earning some cash during the winter months, he would still have been alive. We sow the seeds of our own destruction without even realising it.

I lit a fire and made some tea, to thaw out and steel myself for the job ahead. The Frenchman’s blood was still on my hands. Turned almost black now. I washed it off in ice-cold water, changed my clothes and lifted the pickaxe we had used to dig up roots, then led my horse off through the trees as the sun rose and angled its first warm light between the branches overhead.

It took nearly half an hour to reach Michaél’s plot of land, the notches he had made still there on the trees at the four corners of it. Somewhere near its centre I found a clear area big enough for my purposes and tested the ground. It was rock-hard, still frozen. And I knew it was going to be a long hard job.

After the first eighteen inches the ground began to soften as I broke through the permafrost. But it had taken me over two hours to get there, and it was maybe another three hours before the grave was dug. I had to dig it in an arc to accomodate the curve of Michaél’s frozen body, for there was no way to straighten him out. I lowered him carefully into the hole, still wrapped in canvas, and began shovelling the earth over him. When I had finished I laid one stone at his head, and another at his feet, comforted by the thought that at least he would spend eternity on land that was his. It had never been cleared, and probably never would be. But in some office in some city somewhere, this rectangle of land is registered as belonging to Michaél O’Connor. And in it he lies. Master of it for ever.

I stood then, among the trees, with the sun warming my skin, steam rising off me in the cold air, and I uttered my final farewell to him. ‘Cuiridh mi clach air do charn.’ I’ll put a stone on your cairn . Then I recited aloud from John, chapter 11, the verse that I knew so well by now. ‘ I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die .’

As I sit here now, writing this, I want so much to believe it, just as I did when old blind Calum recited it over my father’s coffin. But I’m not sure that I do any longer, and all I know is that Ciorstaidh is lost, my family is dead, and Michaél is gone.

It should be noted that although Baile Mhanais, Ard Mor Castle and the Langadail Estate are all fictitious, the events depicted in relation to the clearance of settlements there are based on real events that occurred during the nineteenth century on the Isle of Barra, the Isles of North and South Uist, the Isle of Harris, and to a lesser extent the Isle of Lewis, during what has become known as the Highland Clearances.

The Highland potato famine was real and lasted almost ten years.

The quarantine island of Grosse Île in the St Lawrence River existed as described, and has been preserved today much as it was when it finally closed down in 1937.

The largest Celtic cross in the world was erected on Grosse Île in memory of the five thousand Irish immigrants who died there in 1847. This book is dedicated to the memory of all the Scots who died there too, and to the very many more who went on to help make Canada the extraordinary country it is today.

I would like to offer my grateful thanks to those who gave so generously of their time and expertise during my researches for Entry Island . In particular, I’d like to express my gratitude to Bill and Chris Lawson, Seallam Visitor Centre, Northton, Isle of Harris, who have been specialising in the family and social history of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland for over forty years; Mark Lazzeri, Land Manager of the North Harris Trust, for his extraordinary historical knowledge of the land and people of North Harris, and his advice on the stalking, killing and gralloching of a deer; Sarah Egan, for guiding me through the remains of cleared settlements in south-west Lewis; Margaret Savage, née Macdonald, and her mother Sarah, for their time and generosity spent in guiding me around the Eastern Townships of Québec; Ferne Murray and Jean MacIver, both of Lennoxville, Québec, for their hospitality and insights into the Scottish community in the Eastern Townships; Lieutenant Guy Lapointe, Capitaine Martin Hébert, Sergeant Ronald McIvir and Sergeant Enquêteur Daniel Prieur, Sûreté de Québec, Montréal; Sergeant Enquêteur Donald Bouchard, Sûreté de Québec, Municipalité des Îles-de-la-Madeleine; Léonard Aucoin, for his hospitality and help in unravelling the secrets of les Îles-de-la-Madeleine, and allowing me to borrow his house for use in the book; Normand Briand, Canadian Coastguard, les Îles-de-la-Madeleine; Byron Clarke, for his insights into the anglophone community on Entry Island; and Daniel Audet, Auberge La Ruée Vers Gould, for allowing me access to his extraordinary historical records of the settlement of Gould in the Eastern Townships of Québec.