Entry Island

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.