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“Aye, well if ye are”—the ferryman was dubious—“ye’ll please throw up over the side.”
“I’m not,” Monk repeated, hoping it was true, and let himself down into the boat, sitting down in the stern rather hard.
“Well, if ye’re going to help, ye’ll no do it there.” The ferryman frowned at him. “Have ye never been in a wee boat before?” He looked as if he doubted it severely.
Monk stared at him. “It was remembering last time that made me hesitate. The people I knew then,” he added, in case the man thought he was afraid.
“Oh, aye?” The ferryman made room in the seat beside him and Monk moved over, taking the other oar. “I may be daft doing this.” The ferryman shook his head. “I’m hoping I’ll no regret it when we’re out in the current. But I don’t want you trying to move over then, or we’ll likely both end up in the water. An’ I canna swim!”
“Well, if I have to save you, I’ll expect my fare back,” Monk said dryly.
“No if ye’re the one that upsets us.” The ferryman looked him squarely in the eye. “Now hold your hush, man, and bend your back to the oar.”
Monk obeyed, principally because it took all his attention to keep in rhythm with the ferryman, and he was intent not to make more of a fool of himself than he had already.
For more than ten minutes he rowed steadily, and was beginning to be satisfied with himself. The small boat skimmed over the water with increasing ease. He began to enjoy it. It was pleasant to use his body for a change from the pent-up anguish of mind over the previous weeks, and the necessity of sitting in the crowded courtroom, completely uselessly. This was not so difficult. The day was bright and the sunlight off the water almost dazzling, giving the sky and water a unity of blue brilliance which was curiously liberating, as if its very endlessness were a comfort, not a fear. The wind in his face was cold, but it was sharp and clean, and the salt smell of it satisfied him.
Then without any warning they were out of the lee of the headland and into the current and the tide sweeping in from the Moray Firth and into the Beauly, and he almost lost the oar. Involuntarily he caught sight of the ferryman’s face, and the wry humor in the man’s eyes.
Monk grunted and clasped the oar more firmly, bending his back and heaving as powerfully as he could. He was disconcerted to find that instead of shooting forward and outrowing the ferryman, turning the boat on a slew, he merely kept up and the boat plowed through the water across the current towards the far distant shore of the Black Isle.
He tried to compose his mind and consider what he might find when he arrived at Mary Farraline’s croft. There did not seem many possibilities. Either there was no resident tenant, and therefore there would be no rents, and Baird McIvor had merely been either lazy or incompetent, or there was a tenant, and Baird had never collected the rents—or he had, and for some reason not given them to Mary.
Presumably he had kept them, or used them to pay some dishonorable debt, which he could not pay openly out of the money he was known to have. Another woman was the answer which leaped to mind. But surely he could not love anyone beside Eilish? Was it a past indiscretion he was paying to keep silent, both from Oonagh and Eilish? That had a ring of truth to it that was curiously unwelcome. Why, for heaven’s sake? Someone had killed Mary. Proof that it was Baird McIvor would clear Hester beyond shadow.
They were halfway across and the current was more powerful. He had to pull with all his strength, throwing his weight into each stroke, driving his feet against the boards across the bottom of the boat. The ferryman was still rowing easily in a long, slow rhythm which made it look like a natural, almost effortless movement, while Monk’s shoulders were already aching. And he still wore the same very slight smile. Their eyes met for a moment, then Monk looked away.
He began to develop a rhythm within himself, to block out th
e pain across his back with each stroke. He must be getting soft for this to cause him such discomfort. Was that recent? Before the accident, had he been different: ridden horseback perhaps, rowed on the Thames, played some sport or other? There had been nothing in his rooms to indicate so. Yet there was no surplus fat on him, and he was strong. It was just that this was an unaccustomed exercise.
Unwittingly he found himself thinking of Hester. It was quite unreasonable, and yet even while he knew it, he was angry. The loss of her would have hurt him far more than he wished. It made him vulnerable, and he resented it. He could think of courage with power and clarity; it was the one virtue he admired above all others. It was the cornerstone on which all rested. Without it everything else was insecure, endangered by any wind of fortune. How long would justice survive without the courage to fight for it? It was a sham, a hypocrisy, a deceit better unspoken. What was humility unless one possessed the courage to admit error, ignorance and futility, the strength to go back and begin again? What was anything worth—generosity, honor, hope, even pity—without courage to carry it through? Fear could devour the very soul.
And yet the loneliness and the pain were so real. And time was a dimension too easy to overlook. What was bearable for a day, two days, became monstrous when faced without end. Damn Hester!
Suddenly there was water in his face.
“Caught a crab,” the ferryman commented with amusement. “Getting tired?”
“No,” Monk said tersely, although he was nearly exhausted. His back was aching, his hands were blistered, and his shoulders felt like cracking.
“Oh, aye?” the ferryman said dubiously, but did not slacken his pace.
Monk caught another “crab,” skimming the oar over the top of the water instead of digging in, and sending the spray up into their faces, tasting it cold and salty on his lips and in his eyes.
Suddenly memory returned like a blinding moment of vision, except that the actual sight portion of it—the gray, glimmering sea and light on the waves—was gone almost before it registered in his mind. It was the cold, the sense of danger and overwhelming urgency that remained. He was frightened, his shoulders had hurt just as they did now, but he had been younger, far younger, perhaps only a boy. The boat had been bucketing all over the place, tossed on heavy waves, their crests curling white with spume. Why on earth would anyone be out in such weather? Why was he frightened? It was not the waves, it was something else.
But he could not find the memory. There was nothing more, just the cold, the violence of the water, and the terrible overwhelming sense of urgency.
Suddenly the boat shot forward. They were in the lee of the Black Isle and the ferryman was smiling.
“Ye’re a stubborn man,” he said as they slid into the shore. “Ye’ll no be doing this tomorrow, I’ll be thinking. Ye’ll be hurting sore.”
“Possibly,” Monk conceded. “Maybe the tide’ll be on the turn, and the wind not so hard against us.”
“Ye can always hope.” The ferryman held out his hand and Monk paid him his fare. “But the train to the south will no wait for ye.”
Monk thanked him and went to hire a horse to take him the several miles up over the high hills of the Black Isle, almost due north towards the next ferry across the Cromarty Firth.
