pilgrimage, and she needed Ajax’s company as much as she’d needed Ariel’s after Mallo died.
They stopped at the bothy, now looking well tended and recently used, and she took the tin cup she and Mallo had shared from the shelf. Standing in the open door, she watched her breath trail outwards—all the memories of that place escaping into the ether—then latched the door. She walked to the stream, dipped in the cup, and sipped, then held the rest for Ajax. When he was finished, she stuffed the cup into the pocket of her parka.
The sun broke through as they climbed the rise to the Crag with its view of the Munro. She sat on the ledge gazing over the countryside, as she and Mallo had done countless times, hoping for a glimpse of an eagle. Ajax stretched out and was soon asleep. A family of fallow deer browsed close by, and the buck raised his wide rack and sniffed in her direction. “Go on,” she said, waving her arms, “or you’ll end up on Mr. Vodka’s wall.” The buck wheeled and led his bounding entourage into the pines.
On the way back, she ushered Ajax into the family cemetery and they walked the lines of ancestors until they reached the new graves. Ajax lay down on the patch of earth in front of her father’s just-erected stone. Harald Ian Gordon, April 5, 1940 – November 19, 1999. Next came Hannah Ailean Burton, September 22, 1945 – February 17, 1999. At rest between Mallo and Harald, her greatest loves.
In front of Burtie’s stone, the new grass met the old in a neat rectangle. The wind moaned in the pines. Els pulled her hands into her parka cuffs and thought how hard Burtie had struggled to be the surrogate mother she didn’t want.
As she had done just before leaving Cairnoch at the end of every visit since Mallo’s funeral, she stood at the foot of his grave. Malcolm Connell Burton, May 26, 1965 – November 17, 1998. He will raise you up on eagle’s wings. The flowers she’d moved to Mallo’s grave after Harald’s funeral had frozen. She tossed them over the fence and called, “Time to go, AJ.” The dog let out a whining howl. She’d never imagined being barred from this place that was so alive with the spirits of her forebears, who nurtured her with their courage and ferocity. The last of the line, she would not be joining the others here. Who would she be now, separated from this soil, this rugged land? She gazed at the line of graves—her grandfather the Big Laird, grandmother Beatrice, Harald, Burtie, Mallo—and said a silent farewell.
A shipper’s van sat under the portico, its doors agape, a stack of blankets at the ready. The agent and two burly men stood at the door with Mary, who looked disinclined to admit them. Els hurried up and led them into the Great Hall. It was full of everything she couldn’t bear Mr. Vodka to touch.
Ajax hovered so annoyingly that Els took him to the kitchen. She stroked his ears, and he poked his cold nose against her neck. “Don’t ye worry, AJ,” she said. “Ye canna come wi’ me, laddie. Ye’d never manage the trip and the quarantine. Robby McLaren will give ye a good home.” She settled him into his bed and returned to the Great Hall.
After instructing the men to pack everything rowed up on the floor, she said, “Three more things: the case clock in the next room, my bed, and Grandmother’s portrait over your head. Mary will get you a ladder.”
“Surely ye’ll be taking the one of Sir Harald too,” Mary said.
Els looked at the portrait of her father, now devoid of the black ribbon. Since his funeral, she and Timmons had worked to exhaustion to settle the mess he’d left behind. He’d lost her home, and perhaps her mother. “Let the Russian have it,” she said.
“Where are we sending all this, miss?” the agent asked.
“To a dot in the ocean.”
part five
CHAPTER 17
Nevis, West Indies
December 23, 1999
As the Carib Breeze churned across The Narrows toward Nevis, Els stood alone on the open deck and clasped Liz’s blue bead, now on an antique silver chain, hoping whatever powers it contained would bless her adventure. The wind smelled of salt and caramel, sweet and burnt. Except for the Resort’s grounds, the shore before her was a nearly unbroken stretch of bush—wild, impenetrable—meeting the shallow beach.
In Charlestown harbor, the ferry passed astern of Iguana,