I took a breath through my mouth and lifted the towel away; there were blood spots on it, and it stuck a bit. Mrs. Cunningham jerked a little.
“I was thinking that we might just keep her head covered,” I said apologetically. “With a clean cloth, I mean.”
Mrs. Cunningham was frowning at Amy’s face, the wrinkles in her upper lip drawn in like an accordion.
“Can ye not do a bit to tidy her?”
“Well, I can stitch what’s left of the scalp back in place and we could pull some of her hair over the missing ear, but there’s nothing I can do about the … er … the …” The dislodged eyeball hung grotesquely on the crushed cheek, its surface filmed over but still very much a staring eye. “That’s why I thought … cover her face.”
Mrs. Cunningham’s head moved slowly, side to side.
“Nay,” she said softly, her own eyes fixed on Amy. “I’ve buried three husbands and four bairns myself. Ye always want to look upon their faces, one last time. Nay matter what’s happened to them.”
Frank. I’d looked at him, and said my last goodbye. And was glad that I’d had the chance.
I nodded and reached for my surgical scissors.
“GERMAIN TOLD ME where the bear came upon them,” Ian said. “I went along there, quick, on my way down, and I could see where it had gone through the vines, out the end o’ the wee gorge. We’ll start there, aye?”
Jamie and MacMillan nodded, and MacMillan turned to say something reproving to his dogs, who were sniffing industriously from one end of the kitchen to the other, thrusting their broad heads into the hearth and nosing the lidded slop bucket.
“Speaking of Germain,” Jamie said, suddenly aware that his grandson was missing, “where the devil is he?” It was completely unlike Germain to be absent from any interesting situation. He was much more often right in the middle of—
“Did he go with ye to look for the bear’s track?” Jamie asked sharply, interrupting Gillebride’s recriminations. Ian looked blank for a moment, recollecting, but then nodded.
“Aye, he did. But … I was sure he was just behind me as I came down …” He turned involuntarily and glanced behind him now, as though expecting Germain to spring up through the floorboards. With a deep foreboding in his heart, Jamie swung round to face Gillebride.
“Did Jem come back with ye, Gilly?”
MacMillan, a tall, soft-spoken man, took off his hat and scratched his bald pate.
“Aye,” he said slowly. “I suppose so. He ran ahead, though, whilst I was gathering the dogs. Didna see him again.”
“Crìosd eadar sinn agus olc.” Jamie made the horns against the Devil and crossed himself hurriedly. “Christ between us and evil. Let’s go.”
HOW OLD WAS Mrs. Cunningham? I wondered. She looked older with her clothes on. Three husbands, four children—but death was a casual and frequent visitor in these days. Her hands were old, with thick blue veins and knobbed joints, but still agile; she blotted the blood away with a damp cloth, brushed the soft brown hair from the intact side of Amy’s skull, and, arranging it carefully to hide as much damage as she could, braided it into a single thick plait that she laid gently on Amy’s breast.
I’d taken care of the eye—it was sitting on the counter behind me; I’d wrap it discreetly and tuck it into the shroud—and inserted a small wad of lint into the crushed socket, stitching the lid shut over it. There was no concealing that Amy had died by violence, but at least her family would still be able to look at her.
“Mrs …. do you mind if I call you by your Christian name?” I asked abruptly.
She glanced up from her contemplation of the corpse, slightly startled.
“Elspeth,” she said.
“Claire,” I said, and smiled at her. I thought a smile touched her own lips, but before I could be sure, the quilt hanging over the doorway twitched violently and one of Gillebride’s big bear dogs shouldered his way in, sniffing eagerly along the floor.
“And what do you think you’re doing?” I asked. The dog ignored me and made a beeline for the counter, where he rose gracefully onto his hind legs, gulped the eye, and then dropped and ran out in answer to his master’s annoyed call from the hallway.
Elspeth and I stood in frozen silence as the hunting party departed noisily through the front door, the dogs yelping in happy excitement.
As the house fell quiet, Elspeth blinked. She looked down at Amy, peaceful and composed in the embroidered shroud she had woven while expecting her first child. It was edged with a trailing vine, with pink and blue flowers and yellow bees.
“Aye, well,” she said at last. “I dinna suppose it matters so much whether a person’s eaten by worms or by dogs.” She sounded dubious, though, and I suppressed a sudden insane urge to laugh.
“Being eaten by dogs is in the Bible,” I said, instead. “Jezebel.” She raised one sparse gray brow in surprise, evidently at the unexpected revelation that I’d actually read the Bible, but then nodded.
“Well, then,” she said.
JAMIE’S SENSE OF grim urgency was growing more urgent—it was midafternoon already—but there was the one more thing that had to be done. He had to tell Bobby Higgins what they were about and hope that the man was either too shattered to insist on coming, or wise enough not to—and convince him that it was right for Aidan to go. He should have paused to scoop up the wee boys; they were the best reason for Bobby to stay put—but he hadn’t thought of it in time.
His anxiety was eased a good bit by the sight of Jem, loitering outside the Higgins cabin. His relief at finding the lad, though, was immediately tempered by Jem’s impassioned desire to join the hunting party.
“If Aidan can go—” Jem said, for roughly the fourth time, chin jutting out. Jamie bent down and grabbed him by the arm, speaking low so as not to upset Aidan.
“Your mother wasna eaten by a bear, and she’ll no be pleased if you are. Ye’re stayin’.”
“Then Aidan shouldn’t go! His da won’t like it if he gets eaten, will he?”
That was a thought that had been gnawing at Jamie, but he didn’t repent allowing the boy to come.
“His mother was eaten by a bear, and he’s the right to come and see her avenged,” he said to Jem. He let go of the lad’s arm, took him by the shoulder, and turned him toward the cabin. “Go get your da; I want to talk to him.”
The other members of the hunting party were restive, and he told Ian to go on ahead with Gillebride and the dogs, see if they could get upon Germain’s track. Aidan looked wild, still white-faced, his black hair stood on end, and Jamie took hold of him again to quiet him.
“Stay by me, Aidan. We willna be more than a minute, but we must tell your da what’s ado.”
It was much less than a minute before Roger came out of the cabin, blinking in the sunlight, with Jem behind him, looking excited but solemn. Roger Mac bore the same traces of shock that they all did, though he had himself well in hand, and his face relaxed a little, seeing Jamie. Then it tightened again as he saw the rifle.
“You’re—”
“We are.” He motioned the boys firmly away and dropped his voice. “I need to tell Bobby, but I dinna want him to come. Will ye help me talk him round?”