Ice Lake by John Farrow Page A

was obliged to pause at length to catch a deeper breath, not once did he slur a word. His lips and tongue found the precise elocution for each sound. His diction alone, Cinq-Mars was thinking to himself, could grease his way into Heaven.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you something myself,” he said to his father.
“I will go first,” the old man announced. “I’ve been thinking about this since your mother died. You were so sad at the funeral, Emile. As devastated, I would say, as I was. Rarely does one think of oneself in these terms, but I realized then that some day my own passing would cause you grief. It is the way of the world, but when you are a father, it is easy to forget what that means to the son.”
“I will grieve for you, Papa. I’m grieving now. I can’t help that. Nor will I resist it. But you understand grief, you’ve grieved for others. I’ll come out of it. I won’t forget you, but I’ll emerge from my sorrow.”
“Yes, yes,” Albert recited impatiently, “but you are jumping to conclusions, Detective, always one of your faults.”
Cinq-Mars smiled. The soul endures, he was thinking. This soul is no more near death than one yet to be born. “Go ahead. I promise not to interrupt again.”
“Thank you. I used to tell you, Emile, that I had wanted to be a priest. I used to encourage you to be a priest yourself. I wanted you to have the life that was denied me.”
Cinq-Mars knew the story well. War had interfered with his father’s vocation. He had decided to go to war,that was his moral choice in response to the conflagration in Europe, although it was not the popular one in Quebec. By the time he returned, which was before the war’s end due to an injury which had not occurred in battle, his younger brother was enrolled in a seminary, his own father was ailing, and he had to assume the mantle of the family provider. Before he knew what was happening to him, Albert had fallen in love and married, and had a child on the way.
“I realized, at the time of your mother’s passing, and I don’t know why I did not see this sooner, that all my life I had been saying a cruel thing to you.”
“Papa—”
“You promised,” Albert shot back.
“Sorry. Go ahead.”
“Saying that I would rather have been a priest—how was that understood? Did my wife think that my marriage to her was, for me, a poor substitute for the Church? Did my son think that I would rather he had not been born?”
Cinq-Mars gazed into the eyes of his father then, until his father was the one who turned away.
“The life I lived,” Albert Cinq-Mars stated once he had again found the strength, “was the life I was meant to live, one far richer than the one I had imagined for myself. I have been blessed. My wife. My son. I was never deserving of such riches.”
With his hand on his father’s cheek, Cinq-Mars wiped a tear away with his thumb. He leaned forward when he felt that he had attained sufficient emotional control, for he knew that he wanted to tell him something, and not lose the force of his words to either grief or sentiment. He whispered in his father’s ear. “You are the father of my being. I have lived a life very different from yours, but you have always been my pilot. I love you. Thank you.”
Minutes later, after the nurse had taken away the cups, Albert beckoned for his son’s attention once again. “I need a favour, Detective.”
“What would you like, Papa?”
“I need you to be a detective for me.”
Cinq-Mars was understandably puzzled. “Why? Is something missing? Have you been robbed?”
“Emile, I thank God that you did not become a priest. The Church finds itself in disrepair these days. I am glad, that you, like me, remain with the Mother Church, to keep her upright, but what a depressing place it can be for a priest! Around here, there are so few priests. Many parishes are vacant. Others are inhabited by nincompoops. Emile, my time is close at hand. When I receive extreme unction I want