‘It was all my idea,’ I say to the guard, but he ignores me and inclines his head for me to walk up the hill. I don’t recognize him and I can see no hint of mercy in his face when he looks at me.
‘What about the prisoners in the camp?’ I ask.
‘They’re being sent south later,’ he says, tersely.
‘If I could just see –’
‘You’re seeing no one,’ he says, in a flat English accent. ‘The prisoners have all been confined to their huts since last night, when the weather was so bad, and then we noticed people were missing. Everyone was cooped up in the camp – people from Kirkwall were all shut in the mess hut. And now we’ve found you and it’s a right bloody mess. So there’s a boat coming up to take them south. Good riddance, I say.’
I think of all the men who will be sent away, who I will never see again. Gino. Aureliano. Father Ossani.
‘But we need them to finish the barriers!’ I say, my voice too high-pitched.
‘That’s not your business,’ the guard says. ‘You should be worrying about yourself.’ And something in his expression chills me. He sounds angry, but his face softens and I recognize that look: I’ve seen it so often in Kirkwall. Pity and fear.
The chapel is as beautiful as ever. A thin ray of sun washes over the outside walls and makes the inside of the building glow with golden light. But still, when the guard closes the door, it is cold. I huddle against the wall with my knees up.
My head aches. Where is Dot now? And Cesare? Grief bubbles up in me and I wipe the tears from my cheeks.
I wanted to save you, I think. I wanted to save you both.
Perhaps I sleep then, because when I wake, the chapel door is opening and Major Bates is standing in the doorway. His face is severe and I remember that, for all his kindnesses about the chapel, he is an army leader who has killed men, or ordered them killed. He is the man who commanded that Cesare be put in the Punishment Hut.
I would like to stand up, but I can’t make myself move.
He stands in front of me, hands behind his back, his expression thoughtful.
‘Constance, isn’t it?’
I nod, my blood singing in my ears.
‘I don’t think we’ve met, Constance. But you’re in the midst of quite a problem.’
‘It’s all my fault,’ I whisper.
‘So I’ve heard.’ He crouches down and looks me full in the face. His eyes are dark grey and tired. His skin is pale and pouched. He looks, suddenly, like an older man than he once seemed. I wonder if he has children – or grandchildren. I wonder if he sits them on his knee and reads them stories. And I wonder if he sleeps well at night, knowing that he has locked prisoners in the Punishment Hut – knowing that my sister is in there now.
‘It was all my idea,’ I say desperately. Perhaps if I can convince him of this, he’ll let her go.
‘So you keep saying.’ He scratches his head and sits on the floor, watching me. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’ he asks, his voice gentler than I expect.
But perhaps this is a trick, this gentleness.
‘I . . . I can’t remember.’
‘Well,’ he smiles, not unkindly, ‘if you can’t remember, then how can you be so sure it was all your idea?’
‘I just know it was. But I can’t remember some of it.’
He leans forward. ‘What do you remember?’
Water. Screaming. The rocks. The body. The terror.
It feels like a dream now, all of it blurred and unreal. The more I try to remember, the more everything slides away from me. It is like trying to pick up water between my fingers.
I look down at my scabbed hands, folded in my lap.
‘I remember trying to swim,’ I say. ‘But nothing else, until the guards brought me here.’
He sighs, stands up, brushes his hands over his trousers. I wait for him to leave, but he’s looking around at the chapel and he doesn’t know I’m watching him. In that moment, his expression is full of astonishment, as unguarded as a child’s.
‘Incredible,’ he says softly. Then he looks down at me, and in a harder voice, a more impatient voice, he says, ‘What happened last night was a tragedy. You should work on getting your memory back.’
He slams the door behind him, and then I hear something being slid across the wood, like a bolt. I hear him talking to someone outside, a man, and then, as I hear his footsteps receding down the hill, a shadow blocks the light under the door.
I’m locked in, with a guard outside.
I watch the pale sun pouring through the window, casting a wan square on the opposite wall. It moves across the delicate rood screen, the pictures of the birds. I imagine Cesare’s hand making every brush stroke. I imagine the other men who painted most of the tiles behind my back. Are any of them still on the island?
I slide my body closer to the door and press my face to the gap in the wood next to the hinge. If I close one eye, I can just about make out the hill outside, but I can’t see the camp, beyond a blur in the distance, which may just be a trick of the light.
I imagine the prisoners leaving: I picture them climbing aboard a boat and sailing around the island, around the barriers, past the vicious current that drags everything away. In my thoughts, I don’t allow the boat to stop in Wales. I let it continue south, sailing around France and Spain, through the narrow Strait of Gibraltar and onwards through the Mediterranean Sea. I allow the boat to carry the Italian men safely home.
I restore their bombed houses and their broken churches. I call their families back from the grave. I let them step from the boat
