“Daddy!” a voice with a lot of spit whispered loudly in his ear. “Daddy, I hafta go potty!”
He sat up smiling, pushing cloaks and shirts out of the way. Mandy was hopping from foot to foot in agitation, a small black bird, solid against the shadows.
“Aye, sweetheart,” he whispered back, and took her hand, warm and sticky. “I’ll take ye to the privy. Try not to step on anybody.”
MANDY HAD ENCOUNTERED quite a few privies by now, and wasn’t put off by this one. When Roger opened the door, though, a huge spider dropped suddenly from the lintel and hung swaying like a plumb bob, inches from his face. He and Mandy both screamed—well, she did; his own effort was no more than a croak, but a manly croak, at least.
There was no real light yet; the spider was a black blob with an impression of legs, but all the more alarming for that. Alarmed in turn by their cries, the spider hurried back up its thread into whatever invisible recess it normally occupied.
“Not going in dere!” Mandy said, backing up against his legs.
Roger shared her feelings, but taking her off the trail into the bushes in the dark held the threat not only of further （and possibly larger） spiders, or snakes and bats, but also of the things that hunted in the crepuscule. Panthers, for instance … Aidan McCallum had entertained them earlier with a story about meeting a painter on his way to the privy … this privy.
“It’s all right, honey.” He bent and picked her up. “It’s gone. It’s afraid of us, it won’t come back.”
“I scared!”
“I know, sweetie. Don’t worry; I don’t think it will come back, but I’ll kill it if it does.”
“Wif a gun?” she asked hopefully.
“Yes,” he said firmly, and clutching her to his chest he ducked under the lintel, remembering too late Claire’s own story about the enormous rattlesnake perched on the seat of their privy …
In the event, though, nothing untoward occurred, save his nearly losing Mandy down the hole when she let go her grip to try to wipe her bottom with a dried corncob.
Sweating slightly in spite of the chilly morning air, he made his way back to the cabin, to find that in his absence, the Higginses—and Jem and Germain—had risen en masse.
Amy Higgins blinked slightly when told that Brianna had gone a-hunting, but when Roger added that she had gone with her father, the look of surprise faded into a nod of acceptance that made Roger smile inwardly. He was glad to see that Himself’s personality still dominated the Ridge, despite his long absence; Claire had told him last night that they’d only come back from exile the month before.
“Are there many new folk come to settle since we were last here?” he asked Bobby, sitting down on the bench beside his host, bowl of porridge in his hand.
“A mort of ’em,” Bobby assured him. “Twenty families, at least. A bit of milk and honey, Preacher?” He pushed the honey pot companionably in Roger’s direction—being an Englishman, Bobby was allowed such frivolities with his breakfast, rather than the severe Scottish pinch of salt. “Oh, sorry—I should have asked, are you still a preacher?”
Claire had asked him that last night, but it still came as a surprise.
“I am, aye,” he said, and reached for the milk jug. In fact, both question and answer made his heart speed up.
He was a minister. He just wasn’t sure how official he was. Granted, he’d christened, married, and buried the people of the Ridge for a year or more, and preached to them, as well as doing the lesser offices of a minister, and they’d all thought of him as such; no doubt they still did. On the other hand, he was not formally ordained as a Presbyterian minister. Not quite.
“I’ll maybe call on the new folk,” he said casually. “Do ye ken whether they’re any of them Catholic, or otherwise?” This was a rhetorical question; everyone on the Ridge knew the nature of everyone else’s beliefs—and weren’t at all shy of discussing them, if not always to their faces.
Amy plunked a tin mug of chicory coffee by his bowl and sat down to her own salted porridge with a sigh of relief.
“Fifteen Catholic families,” she said. “Twelve Presbyterians and three Blue Light—Methodies, aye? Ye’ll want to watch out for thon folk, Preacher. Hmm … oh, and maybe twa Anglicans … Orrie!” She sprang up, just in time to interrupt six-year-old Orrie, who had been stealthily, if unsteadily, lifting the full chamber pot above his head with the clear intent of emptying it over Jem, who was sitting cross-legged by the fire, blinking sleepily at the shoe in his hand.