Was it? The stranger seemed different now than he had on first sight. Shorter. The neck was maybe longer, and it was scrawny, in spite of the bulging stomach. The other’s neck had been creased, two deep lines dividing the fat into rings. “Fat lumpkin,” his sister had called the man who’d raped Claire. The pressure in his chest eased a little, and he considered the face, carefully this time.
No. No, it wasn’t the same at all, and his belly hollowed with relief. The face was unshaven and had been for some time, but if he disregarded that, then … no. Nose and mouth were a different shape altogether.
“Ye thought ye might ken him, Uncle?” Ian was looking at him from the opposite side of the table, interested. “I thought that, too.”
“Did ye, indeed,” Jamie said, and the pressure in his chest was back. He resisted the urge to turn and look outside. Instead, he said in the Gàidhlig, “A man ye might have seen by firelight once before?”
Ian nodded, his gaze steady, and replied in the same language.
“The man whose filth defiled your fair one? Yes.”
That was as much a shock as finding Ian here, and it must have shown on his face, for Ian grimaced, then looked apologetic. “Janet Murray’s your sister, bràthair-mhàthair, but she’s my mother.” Dropping back into English, he added, “I’ll no say she canna keep secrets, for she does. But if she sees reason to speak, then ye’re going to hear what she has to say. She told me some weeks ago, when I came to say I was going to Beardsley’s trading post, and did she want anything. She told me to keep an eye out for the fellow.”
This eased Jamie a little, and he looked back at the dead stranger.
“We dinna want to say anything to her about this.”
“No, we don’t,” Ian agreed, and a faint shudder went over him at the thought.
“From curiosity,” Jamie said, returning to the Gàidhlig, “why did your mother tell ye about the mhic an diabhail?”
“If it might be that you needed my help in the killing, a bràthair mo mhàthair,” Ian said, with the trace of a smile. “She said I must not offer, but if ye asked, I must go with you. And I would have done so,” he added softly, his eyes dark in the lantern’s glow. “Without the telling.
“What do you think?” he said then, changing subjects with a nod at the stranger. “Plainly, it is not the same man. That man is dead?”
“He is.”
Ian nodded, matter-of-fact.
“Good. Do we think this one might be his kin?”
“I dinna ken, but this one is also dead, and I canna think his death”—Jamie nodded at the corpse—“can have aught to do with the other.”
Ian nodded in agreement.
“Then I think it hasna anything to do wi’ us, either.”
Jamie felt air in his chest, light and cold and fresh.
“He has not,” he agreed. Then, struck by a thought, asked, “How do ye come to ken what the—other—looked like?”
“The same as you, I expect. Went to Beardsley’s and asked after the man wi’ the birthmark. Dinna fash,” he added. “I didna make a meal of it; no one would remember.”
“No,” Jamie said flatly. No one would remember, because no one would ever see the man again, or think to look for him—he wasn’t the sort of man who had real business with anyone. He was the sort of man who lived and died alone. Save for his dog.
And even if someone thought to visit him, they willna find him. It wasn’t unusual for solitary men to disappear in the backcountry, their passing unremarked. Killed by accident, died of untended illness, wandered away …
They stood together for a moment, scrutinizing the stranger’s face. Jamie felt Ian relax, his decision made, and a moment later, Jamie also shook his head and stepped back.
“No,” he said, and Ian nodded and, leaning forward, blew out the lantern’s wick, leaving them in darkness with the smell of the dead man.
“Ye’re sure, yourself?” Jamie asked, not moving. Ian hadn’t asked him that, but he couldn’t help himself. Ian touched his shoulder.
“I’m sure this man is no concern of ours,” he said firmly. “Ought we to leave him with a blessing, though? He’s a stranger.”
They stood close together and murmured the short form of the death dirge. Jamie’s eyes were accustomed now to the dark of the shed, and he saw the words come out of their mouths in white wisps, insubstantial as the soul they blessed.
They left, and Jamie closed the shed door quietly behind them.
THE MAN WAS still in their minds, though, as they walked down the street. Not the dead man they had just left. The other.
“Ye didna go to look for him, did ye?” Jamie asked Ian as they turned in to the main street. “After ye learnt his name, I mean.”
“Och, no. I kent ye’d dealt with him.” They were near the square, and there was enough light from the taverns that he saw Ian glance at him, one brow raised.
“Ken, I had some business in the forest near the bottom of the Ridge, and I heard your horse comin’ along the wagon road just after dawn, so I went and looked. Ye had your rifle with ye and ye looked grim enough. I could tell ye were hunting, but it wouldna be an animal, of course, not on horseback.” Ian’s head turned briefly toward him.
“Ye didna look like ye needed help, but I said the prayer for ye, Uncle—for a warrior goin’ out.”
The knot between Jamie’s shoulder blades relaxed a bit. He found it oddly comforting to know that he had not in fact gone alone on that journey, even though he’d not known it at the time.
“I thank ye, Ian. It was a help, I’m sure.” The cold oppression of the shed had lifted with the advent of torchlights and the noise of the town, so they walked for a bit by silent consent, leaving the women time to settle themselves and put the bairn to bed.
The moon was well above the housetops of Salisbury, but there were still men abroad in the streets, and the place had a restless air about it.
They passed a group of men, twenty or so, faceless under the dark brims of their hats, but the moon lit a pale cloud of the dust kicked up by their boots, so it seemed they walked knee-deep through a rising fog. They were Scotch-Irish, talking loudly, noticeably drunk and arguing among themselves, and Jamie and Ian passed by unnoticed. Francis Locke had said there were a number of militia companies in the town; these men had the look of new militia—self-important and unsure at the same time, and wanting to show that they weren’t.
They crossed through the square and the streets behind it and found silence again amid the calling of owls from the trees near Town Creek. Ian broke it, talking low, halfway to himself and halfway not.
“Last time I walked like this—at night, I mean, just walking, not huntin’—was just after Monmouth,” he said. “I’d been in the British camp, wi’ his lordship, and he asked me to stay, because I’d an arrow in my arm—ye recall that, aye? Ye broke the shaft for me, earlier that day.”
“I’d forgot,” Jamie admitted.
“Well, it was a long day.”
“Aye. I remember bits and pieces—I lost my horse when he went off a bridge into one of those hellish morasses, and I’m never going to forget the sound o’ that.” A deep shudder curdled his wame, recalling the taste of his own vomit. “And then I remember General Washington—were ye there, Ian, when he turned back the retreat after Lee made a collieshangie of it?”