“South to Ireland. She will take on more there. Then to Cape Breton.”

“Perhaps they will have a better life in Canada.”

“That may be,” said Ranald. “But they would stay if they knew how.”

For several minutes they watched the ship in silence, the white specks of seabirds hovering over her wake. No naval frigate, then, but an emigration ship. Lacroix was relieved—deeply—but when he glanced at Ranald and watched him watching, he thought he saw in that face the dry-eyed grief of an entire race. They might, the two of them, both be soldiers—ex-soldiers—but they were not the same. He came from among the victors, the owners. If he was not collecting rents in Scotland, rents were being collected in his name elsewhere. Things were due to him and backed by law. And it was Ranald and countless like him who were put into the line to defend it. And did so. Gave their hands to a class of men who would later see them ruined and packed off to Canada . . .

He had these thoughts then let them go. It was hot and they did not lead anywhere, or nowhere he felt able to follow them. It was like Christ’s teaching of living the life of the spirit. You heard it at the service then went home for your dinner. You weren’t changed.

“Have you found anything?” he asked.

“Only this,” said Ranald, touching with one of his hooks a small curved shape in the grass above the trench. Lacroix picked it up and wiped it with a thumb. It was clay. A two-inch-wide section of something shattered perhaps a thousand years ago. It had a pattern of lines, a slanting design grooved into the clay, lines that brought to mind a tool, a hand.

“You have done better than the rest of us,” he said, settling the pottery on to the grass again.

“Cornelius will think it a prize.”

“It is what is left,” said Ranald.

“Yes,” said Lacroix. “It is what is left.”

Hard to know if they were speaking of the same thing.

All day they kept the sun and the heat. When they sat for their evening meal the windows of the long room were as wide as they would go. The inside world and the outside world were smudged a little. They watched the sky work through its tints. A few clouds in the west floating like toys. It was a little mysterious.

They ate fish—saithe—and gritty bread and the first leaves from Emily’s garden (Emily’s as she was the only one who worked in it). Lacroix found he did not miss eating meat. Occasionally he thought of the meat pies and collops of beef Nell used to cook for him but he was content to eat simply, reckoned a light regimen did him good. It also made him feel less awkward about accepting their hospitality.