William Monk 05 - The Sins of the Wolf

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 theanswer 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 the 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. A
nd
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