“They didn’t have any children, did they?”

Émile shook his head. “But others were also pretty tight lipped about Champlain. A couple of the Jesuit priests and a Récollet lay brother mention him in their journals, but even then it was nothing personal. Just daily life. Why the secrecy?”

“What’s your theory? You’ve studied the man most of your life.”

“I think it was partly the time, less stress on the individual. There wasn’t quite the culture of ‘me’ that there is now. But I also think there might’ve been something he was trying to hide and it made him a very private person.”

“The unacknowledged son of a king?”

Émile hesitated. “He wrote prolifically, you know, thousands of pages. Buried in all those words, all those pages, was one sentence.”

Gamache was listening closely, imagining Champlain bent over the paper with a quill pen and a pot of ink by candlelight in a Spartan home four hundred years and a few hundred yards away from where they were sitting.

“I am obligated by birth to the King,” said Émile. “Historians for centuries have tried to figure out what that could mean.”

Gamache rolled it around in his head. I am obligated by birth to the King. It was certainly suggestive. Then something occurred to him.

“If Champlain’s body was found, and we knew beyond a doubt it was him, they could do DNA tests.” He was watching Émile as he spoke. His mentor’s eyes were on the table. Was it deliberate? Not wanting to make eye contact? Was it possible?

“But would it matter?” Gamache mused. “Suppose the tests proved he was the son of Henri IV, who cares today?”

Émile raised his eyes. “From a practical point of view it would mean nothing, but symbolically?” Émile shrugged. “Pretty potent stuff, especially for the separatists who already see Champlain as a powerful symbol of Québec independence. It would only add to his luster and the romantic vision of him. He’d be both heroic and tragic. Just how the separatists see themselves.”

Gamache was quiet for a moment. “You’re a separatist, aren’t you Émile?”

They’d never talked about it before. It hadn’t been exactly a dirty little secret, just a private subject they’d never broached. In Québec politics was always dangerous territory.

Émile looked up from his omelette. “I am.”

There was no challenge, just acknowledgment.

“Then you might have some insight,” said Gamache. “Could the separatist movement use this murder?”

Émile was quiet for a moment then put down his fork. “It’s slightly more than a ‘movement’ Armand. It’s a political force. More than half the population say they’re Québec Nationalists. Separatists have formed the government many times.”

“I didn’t mean to belittle it,” smiled Gamache. “I’m sorry. And I’m aware of the political situation.”

“Of course you are, I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t.”

Already the atmosphere was becoming charged.

“I’ve been a separatist all my adult life,” said Émile. “From the late sixties to this very day. Doesn’t mean I don’t love Canada. I do. Who couldn’t love a country that allows such diversity of thought, of expression? But I want my own country.”

“As you say, many agree with you, but there’re fanatics on both sides of the debate. Ardent Federalists who fear and distrust the French aspirations—”

“And demented separatists who’d do whatever it took to separate from Canada. Including violence.”

Both men thought about the October Crisis decades earlier when bombs were going off, when Francophones refused to speak English, when a British diplomat was kidnapped and a Québec cabinet minister murdered.

All in the name of Québec independence.

“No one wants to return to those days,” said Émile, looking his companion square in the eye.

“Are you so sure?” asked the Chief Inspector, gently but firmly.

The air bristled between them for a moment, then Émile smiled and picked up his fork. “Who knows what’s hidden below the surface, but I think those days are dead and buried.”

“Je me souviens,” said Gamache. “What was it René Dallaire called Québec? A rowboat society? Moving forward but looking back? Is the past ever really far from sight here?”

Émile stared at him for a moment, then smiled and resumed eating while Gamache gazed out the frosty window, his mind wandering.