The next morning, Luke and Thaddeus parted ways, Luke aboard a coach that would take him to Montreal, Thaddeus on his way back to Wellington astride a bay mare that he rented from the livery. It had been a long time since Thaddeus had been on horseback. His knee still hurt, and he felt bruised and shaken from his exertions of the last few days, but the wind in his face and the gentle rhythm of the horse’s gait soothed him as he headed west toward Bath. He had ministered to this circuit once upon a time. He would ride slowly and stop often, visit old acquaintances, share meals with old friends. Maybe then he would be ready to go home.
He and Luke had talked for a long time the previous night, stitching together the things they knew, guessing at the things they didn’t. It was a sorrowful story, and one that was not yet ended. Thaddeus still didn’t know who had left the ribbon with John Porter’s body. Luke would not share this intelligence.
“It was told to me in confidence,” he said. “And I’ll take the information with me to the grave.” By which Thaddeus guessed that it must be something to do with the priest. There was still a reserve when Luke spoke of Higgins, a warning that the subject must not be pursued too far. Someday, Thaddeus hoped, his son would be ready to tell him about it.
They decided that it would be Thaddeus who would write to Anthony Hawke, the man charged with investigating the shameful fraud that had taken place in Toronto. He would tell Hawke what they knew about Captain Bellwood’s role in the disappearance of brandy that had been earmarked for fever patients, and about Hands’s comprehensive network of criminal activities in the city. He had little hope that it would do much good. Hands, as Rennie said, had his hands in everything, and this apparently included much of the local law enforcement.
It would fall to Luke to tell Henry Gallagher that his brother would not be joining him in the Huron Tract. “I’ll give him the gist of what happened,” he said. “It’s enough that Charley is dead. He doesn’t need to know who shot him.”
Thaddeus concurred. “The last thing you want to do is start a new round of reprisals. It can end here.”
Which brought them to Bridie Shanahan and her strange atonement: seven girls lost, seven girls gained, in the hope that she could appease her way to heaven, a strategy with which Thaddeus was all too familiar. And to Anna Porter, whose concept of justice derived not from ordinary precepts of right and wrong, but from some strange fairy otherworld beyond the ken of mortal man.
Luke had taken the two halves of Henry Gallagher’s pound note and presented them to Anna before he left. “Go steal some glue,” he said to her. “You can put them together to help Bridie look after the girls.”
Thaddeus suddenly realized that he still had a length of green ribbon in his coat pocket. It was Martha’s by rights; he had only borrowed it. But now he felt compelled to toss it away in a gesture that he hoped would mark an end to the cycle of violence and revenge and regret, that, in the words of Bridie Shanahan, “It stops here.”
He rode to the edge of the road, where it sloped down to meet the lake, and held the ribbon out so that it trailed in the northeast wind. And then he let it go.