They sat for a little while, not speaking. The sun had come well above the treetops by now, and while the air was still fresh and sweet, there was no longer any chill in it.
“Aye, well,” he said, at last, standing up. “Do ye still want to pray?” For she still held the pearl rosary, dangling from one hand. He didn’t wait for her reply but reached into his shirt and drew out the wooden rosary that he wore about his neck.
“Oh, ye’ve got your old beads after all,” she said, surprised. “Ye didna have your rosary in Scotland, so I thought ye’d lost it. Meant to make ye a new one, but there wasna time, what with Ian …” She lifted one shoulder, the gesture encompassing the whole of the terrible months of Ian’s long dying.
He touched the beads, self-conscious. “Aye, well … I had, in a way of speaking. I … gave it to William. When he was a wee lad, and I had to leave him at Helwater. I gave him the beads for something to keep—to … remember me by.”
“Mmphm.” She looked at him with sympathy. “Aye. And I expect he gave them back to ye in Philadelphia, did he?”
“He did,” Jamie said, a bit terse, and a wry amusement touched Jenny’s face.
“Tell ye one thing, a bràthair—he’s no going to forget you.”
“Aye, maybe not,” he said, feeling an unexpected comfort in the thought. “Well, then …” He let the beads run through his fingers, taking hold of the crucifix. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty …”
They said the Creed together, then the Our Father, and the three Hail Marys, and the Glory Be.
“Joyful or Glorious?” he asked, fingers on the first bead of the decades. He didn’t want to do the Sorrowful Mysteries, the ones about suffering and crucifixion, and he didn’t think she did, either. A yaffle called from the maples, and he wondered briefly if it was one they’d already seen, or a third. Three for a wedding, four for a death …
“Joyful,” she said at once. “The Annunciation.” Then she paused, and nodded at him to take the first turn. He didn’t have to think.
“For Murtagh,” he said quietly, and his fingers tightened on the bead. “And Mam and Da. Hail Mary, full o’ grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Amen.” Jenny finished the prayer and they said the rest of the decade in their usual way, back and forth, the rhythm of their voices soft as the rustle of grass.
They reached the second decade, the Visitation, and he nodded at Jenny—her turn.
“For Ian òg,” she said softly, eyes on her beads. “And Ian Mòr. Hail Mary …”
The third decade was William’s. Jenny glanced at him when he said so, but only nodded and bent her head.
He didn’t try to avoid thinking of William, but he didn’t deliberately call the lad to mind, either; there was nothing he could do to help, until or unless William asked for it, and it would do neither of them good to worry about what the lad was doing, or what might be happening to him.
But … he’d said “William,” and for the space of an Our Father, ten Hail Marys, and a Glory Be, William must perforce be in his mind.
Guide him, he thought, between the words of the prayer. Give him good judgment. Help him to be a good man. Show him his way … and Holy Mother … keep him safe, for your own Son’s sake … “World without end, Amen,” he said, reaching the final bead.
“For all those to hame in Scotland,” Jenny said without hesitation, then paused and looked up at him. “Laoghaire, too, d’ye think?”
“Aye, her, too,” he said, smiling despite himself. “So long as ye put in that poor bastard she’s married to, as well.”
For the last decade, they paused for a moment, eyeing each other.
“Well, the last was for the folk in Scotland,” he said. “Let’s do this one for the folk elsewhere—Michael and wee Joan and Jared, in France?”
Jenny’s face grew momentarily soft—she’d not seen Michael since Ian’s funeral, and the poor lad had been shattered, his young wife suddenly dead, a child gone with her—and then his father. Jenny’s mouth trembled for an instant, but her voice was clear and the sun lay soft on the white of her cap as she bent her head. “Our Father, who art in heaven …”