She nodded, seeming a little calmer, though her hands were still trembling, the folded sheet bunched between them.
“Why is Da sending for Mr. MacMillan?” she asked.
“He has two good hunting dogs,” I said evenly. “And a boar spear.”
“Holy Lord. He—they—they’re going to hunt the bear? Now?”
“Well, yes,” I said mildly. “Before it gets too far away. Where’s Aidan?” I added, realizing that she’d said “the little boys.” Aidan was twelve, but still qualified, in my book. “Did he go with Jem?”
“No,” she said, her voice sounding odd. “He’s with Da.”
AIDAN WAS WHITE as milk and he kept blinking his swollen red eyes, though he’d stopped greeting. He hadn’t stopped shaking. Jamie put a hand on the lad’s shoulder and could feel the tremble coming up from the earth through Aidan’s flesh.
“I-I-I’m c-c-coming,” Aidan said, though his chin wobbled so much you could scarce understand him. “T-to hunt the b-bear.”
“Of course ye are.” Jamie squeezed the fragile shoulder and, after a moment’s hesitation, let go and turned toward the house. “Come with me, a bhalaich,” he said. “We’ll need to fettle ourselves before we go out.”
Every instinct he had was for avoiding the house, where Claire and the women would be laying Amy out. But he’d been younger than Aidan was now when his own mother died, and he remembered the desolation of being shut out, sent away from the house while the women opened the windows and doors, covered the mirror, and went purposefully about with bowls of water and herbs, completing the secret rituals of taking his mother away from him.
Besides, he thought bleakly, glancing down at the blanched wee lad stumbling along beside him, the boy had seen his mother dying in her blood little more than an hour ago, her face torn half away. Nothing he might see or hear now would be worse.
They stopped at the well and Jamie made Aidan drink cold water and wash his face and hands, and Jamie did likewise and said the beginning of the Consecration of the Chase for him:
“In name of the Holy Threefold as one,
In word, in deed, and in thought,
I am bathing my own hands,
In the light and in the elements of the sky.
“Vowing that I shall never return in my life,
Without fishing, without fowling either,
Without game, without venison down from the hill,
Without fat, without blubber from out the copse.”
Aidan was breathing hard from the shock of the cold water, but he could talk again.
“Bears have fat,” he said.
“Aye. And we will take it from him.” Jamie scooped water in his hand and, dipping three fingers into the puddle in his palm, made the Sign of the Cross on Aidan’s forehead, breast, and shoulders.
“Life be in my speech,
Sense in what I say,
The bloom of cherries on my lips,
’Til I come back again.
“Traversing corries, traversing forests,
Traversing valleys long and wild.
The fair white Mary still uphold me,
The Shepherd Jesu be my shield.
“Say that last bit wi’ me, lad.”
Aidan drew himself up a little and piped along,
“The fair white Mary still uphold me,
The Shepherd Jesu be my shield.”
“Well, then.” Jamie pulled out his shirttail and wiped Aidan’s face and his own. “Will ye have heard that prayer before?”
Aidan shook his head. Jamie hadn’t thought he would; Aidan’s real father, Orem McCallum, might have taught him, but Bobby Higgins was an Englishman, and while a good man in himself, he wouldn’t know the auld ways.
As though the thought had conjured him, Aidan asked seriously, “Will Daddy Bobby come with us to hunt the bear?”
Jamie sincerely hoped not; Bobby had been a soldier, but was no hunter, and in his grief and distraction might easily get himself or someone else killed. And there were the little lads to think of. But he said, “If he feels he must, then he shall. But I hope he will not.” Roger had taken Bobby, looking completely destroyed, back to the Higgins cabin.
He set the bucket on the well coping and laid a hand on Aidan’s shoulder again; it was firmer now, and the bairn’s chin had stopped quivering.
“Come on, then,” he said. “We’ll fetch my rifle and set things in order. Ian Òg and Mr. MacMillan will be here soon.”
“GO,” I SAID to Bree, but more gently. I came and took the sheet that she was still clutching, set it down, and put my arms around her.
“I understand,” I said quietly. “She’s your friend, and you want to do what you still can do for her. And you don’t know why it’s her lying there and you standing here, still alive, and everything’s come apart at the seams.”
She made a small sound of assent and caught her breath in a sob. She clung tight to me for a moment, then let go. Tears were trembling on her lashes, but she was holding on to herself now, not me.
“Tell me what to do,” she said, straightening up. “I have to do something.”
“Take care of Amy’s children,” I said. “That’s what she’d want you to do, above all things.”
She nodded, pressing her lips together in determination—but then glanced at the still figure on the table, smelling of urine, feces, and the thick reek of torn flesh. Flies were beginning to come through the window; they flew in lazy circles, scenting opportunity, seeking a place to lay their eggs. On the body. It wasn’t Amy anymore, and the flies had come to lay claim to her.
Brianna was nearly as good as Jamie at hiding her feelings when she had to, but she wasn’t hiding anything now, and I saw the fear and anguish underneath the shock. She couldn’t bear to deal with Amy’s shattered body—and so had come to do so. Fraser, I thought, moved by her bravery as much as by her grief.
I picked up the other towel and slapped it on the counter, killing two flies that had been unwary enough to land near me.
“Someone will come,” I repeated. “Go. Take Fanny with you.”
28
Math-ghamhainn
IAN, NOT SURPRISINGLY, APPEARED first, walking in through the open front door. Jamie heard the soft tread of his moccasins a moment before Ian spoke to Claire in the surgery. There was a brief exclamation of shock—Germain would have told him what was to do, but not even a Mohawk would be unmoved by the sight of Amy Higgins’s body—and then his voice dropped in a murmur of respect before the soft tread came on toward the kitchen.
“That’ll be Ian,” Jamie said to Aidan, who was very slowly and painstakingly filling cartridges on the kitchen table, tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth as he poured gunpowder from Jamie’s flask. He stopped at Jamie’s words, looking toward the door.
Ian didn’t disappoint the lad. He was carrying his own long rifle, with shot pouch and cartridge box, but had also brought a very large and wicked-looking knife, thrust through his belt unsheathed, and had a strung bow and a birch-bark quiver over his shoulder. He was shirtless, in buckskin leggings and loincloth, but had taken a moment to say his own prayers and apply his hunting paint: his forehead was red above the eyebrows and a thick white stripe ran down the bridge of his nose, with another on each side, running from cheekbone to jaw. White, he’d told Jamie, was for vengeance, or to commemorate the dead.