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“No,” Emily said with amazement. “I … I didn’t even know he was an artist.” She felt ashamed. “We thought he had some kind of family money. Not a lot, but enough to live on.”

Father Tyndale laughed. It was a rich, happy sound in the empty land where she could hear only bird cries, wind, and the pony’s feet on the road. “That’s true enough, but we judge a man by his soul, not his pocket,” he answered her. “Hugo painted for the love of it.”

“What did he look like?” she asked. Then she felt self-conscious for thinking of something so trivial, and wanted Father Tyndale to understand the reason. “Just so I can picture him. When you think of someone, you get an idea in your head. I want it to be right.”

“He was a big man,” Father Tyndale replied thoughtfully. “He had brown hair that curled, and blue eyes. He was happy, that’s what I remember he looked like. And he had beautiful hands, as if he could touch anything without hurting it.”

With no warning at all, Emily found herself almost on the edge of tears that she would never meet Hugo Ross. She must be very tired. She had been traveling for two days, and she had no idea what sort of a place she was going to, or how Susannah would be changed by time and illness, not to mention years of estrangement from the family. This whole journey was ridiculous. She shouldn’t have allowed Jack to talk her into coming.

It was over four hours now since they had left Galway. “How much longer will it be?” she asked the priest.

“Not more than another two hours,” he replied cheerfully. “That’s the Twelve Fins over there,” he pointed to a row of hills now almost straight to the north. “And the Lake of Ballynahinch ahead. We’ll turn off before then, down towards the shore, then past Roundstone, and we’re there.”

They stopped at another hotel, and ate more excellent food. Afterwards it was even more difficult going out into the dusk and a damp wind from the west.

Then the sky cleared and as they crested a slight rise the view opened up in front of them, the sun spilled across the water in a blaze of scarlet and gold, black headlands seeming to jut up out of liquid fire. From the look of it, the road before them could have been inlaid with bronze. Emily could smell the salt in the air and, looking up a moment, her eye caught the pale underside of birds circling, riding the wind in the last light.

Father Tyndale smiled and said nothing, but she knew he had heard her sharp intake of breath.

“Tell me something about the village,” she said when the sun had almost disappeared and she knew the pony must be finding its way largely by habit, knowing it was almost home.

It was several moments before he answered, and when he did she heard a note of sadness in his voice, as if he were being called to account for some mistake he had made.

“It’s smaller than it was,” he said. “Too many of our young people go away now.” He stopped, seeming lost for further words.

Emily felt embarrassed. This was a land in which neither she nor her countrymen had any business, yet they had been here for centuries. She was made welcome because they were hospitable by nature. But what did they really feel? What had it been like for Susannah coming here? Little wonder she was desperate enough to ask a Catholic priest to beg anyone of her family to be with her for her last days.

She cleared her throat. “Actually I was rather thinking of the houses, the streets, the people you know … that sort of thing.”

“You’ll meet them, for sure,” he answered. “Mrs. Ross is well liked. They’ll call, even if only briefly, not to tire her, poor soul. She used to walk miles along the shore, or over towards the Roundstone Bog, especially in the spring. She went with Hugo when he took his paints. Just sat and read a book, or went looking for the wildflowers. But the sea was the best for her. Never grew tired of looking at it. She was collecting some papers about the Martin family, but I don’t know if she kept up with that after she fell ill.”

“Who are