I waited with Rachel to receive Bobby, mentally compiling a list. There was a full cask of whisky and a half-empty one in the pantry, but no beer. Caitlin Breuer might bring some; I should send Jem and Germain up to ask … And perhaps Roger would go speak to Tom MacLeod about the coffin.
Footsteps in the hall, and the sound of choked breathing. Bobby appeared in the doorway, but to my surprise, it was Brianna, not Roger, supporting him. She looked nearly as destroyed as Bobby did, but had her arm firmly round his shoulders. She was four inches taller than he was, and despite her obvious distress stood solid as a rock.
“Amy,” he said, seeing the white shroud, and her name was no more than an anguished breath. “Oh, my God … Amy …” He looked at me, in red-eyed appeal and silent despair. How could I have let her die?
Nothing could have saved her and we both knew it, but I felt the sting of helplessness and guilt, nonetheless.
Bobby began to cry, in the awful, wrenching way that men do. Brianna had been pale and blotchy with grief and shock; now she flushed, her own eyes welling.
Rachel moved near my shoulder, and next thing I knew, she’d taken Bobby from Bree as easily as she might have accepted a fresh egg in her hand, careful of him, but calm.
“Let us sit with thy wife for a bit,” she said softly, and guided him to a stool. She cast a quick look over her shoulder at Brianna, and nodded to me before sitting down beside Bobby.
I walked Bree out of the surgery and straight out of the house, thinking that she wouldn’t want the other women to see her so distraught. I must give her something for the shock, I thought, but before I could suggest anything, she’d turned and gripped me by the elbow, wet eyes blazing through her tears.
“Da’s gone,” she said. “And he’s taken Roger and Jem and Aidan with him! To hunt that bloody bear!”
“Oh, aye,” Jenny said behind me, before I could speak. She laid a hand on Brianna’s arm and squeezed. “Dinna fash, lass. Jamie’s a hard man to kill, and Ian’s painted his face. And I said the blessing for them both—the one for a warrior goin’ out. They’ll be fine.”
ROGER CAUGHT UP with Jamie and the two boys—he was glad to see that they’d met Germain along the way—just short of the opening to the small gorge where the grapevines grew in abundance. They’d heard him crashing along and had paused to wait for him.
He stopped, breathing heavily, and nodded toward the rocky wall where the vines rippled and quivered in the light breeze. “This is where it happened?” The smell of ripe muscats was strong and sweet above the rough, bitter smell of the leaves, and his stomach growled in response; he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Jamie reached into his sporran and handed him half a crumbling bannock, without comment.
“Farther on, Dad,” Jemmy said. “We were over there, up on top of the cliff. Mam and Mrs. Higgins were down below—see where that big shadow is, that’s where—” He broke off abruptly, stared, then shrieked. “The bear! The bear! There it is!”
Roger dropped the bannock and his staff and seized Jemmy by one arm and Aidan by the collar, dragging them back. Jamie and Ian didn’t move. They looked down the length of the gorge, looked at each other, then shook their heads.
“Dinna fash, a bhalaich,” Jamie said to Aidan, kindly. “It’s no the bear.”
“Ye’re … sure of that, are ye?” Roger felt as though the breath had been knocked out of him. He could see what Jemmy’d seen: a small growth of hemlocks on the left rim of the gorge cast deep shadow over the vines on the right, and something was moving in that shadow.
“Foxes,” Ian said, with a one-shouldered shrug. “Come to—ah—” He broke off, noticing Aidan, who was breathing like a steam engine.
“Sanguinem culum lingere,” Jamie said tersely. “Bluebell! Come to me, a nighean.”
All the dogs were interested in the foxes, tugging at their leashes and whining, but not barking.
To lick the blood. Roger’s mind made the Latin translation and rapidly readjusted itself to events, presenting him with a stomach-dropping sense of what had happened here, only a few hours ago.
Jamie was talking to Ian and Gillebride in Gaelic now, gesturing along the ridge. Jem and Aidan clustered close to Roger, silent and big-eyed. The breeze had changed direction, and he heard the squealing and barks of the foxes.
“Did you see what happened to Mrs. Higgins?” Roger asked Jem, low-voiced.
Jem shook his head. “Mandy did,” he said. “Mam came up the grapevines and got us. Like Tarzan,” he added.