“It is sorrowful we are for you,” Jamie said, in formal condolence. “She who is gone . . . ?” He paused in delicate inquiry.
“My father’s sister,” answered Mrs. Gwilty promptly. “Woe, woe, that she should be buried among strangers.” She had a lean, underfed face, the spare flesh deeply hollowed and bruised-looking round dark eyes. She turned these deep-set eyes on Jemmy, who promptly grabbed the edge of his bonnet and pulled it down over his face. Seeing the dark, bottomless eyes swivel in her direction, Brianna was hard-pressed not to do the same.
“I hope—that her shade will find comfort. With—with your family being here,” Claire said, in her halting Gaelic. It sounded most peculiar in her mother’s English accent, and Brianna saw her father bite his lower lip in order not to smile.
“She will not lack company for long.” Olanna blurted it out, then, catching Jamie’s eye, went beet-red and buried her nose in her shawl.
This odd statement seemed to make sense to her father, who nodded.
“Och, so? Who is it ails?” He looked at her mother in question, but she shook her head slightly. If anyone was sick, they hadn’t sought her help.
Mrs. Gwilty’s long, seamed upper lip pressed down over dreadful teeth.
“Seaumais Buchan,” she remarked with grim satisfaction. “He lies fevered and his chest will kill him before the week is out, but we’ve beaten him. A fortunate thing.”
“What?” said Claire, frowning in bewilderment.
Mrs. Gwilty’s eyes narrowed at her.
“The last person buried in a graveyard must stand watch over it, Sassenach,” Jamie explained in English. “Until another comes to take his place.”
Switching smoothly back to Gaelic, he said, “Fortunate is she, and the more fortunate, in having such bean-treim to follow her.” He put a hand into his pocket and handed over a coin, which Mrs. Gwilty glanced at, then blinked and looked again.
“Ah,” she said, gratified. “Well, we will do our best, the girl and I. Come then, a nighean, let me hear you.”
Olanna, thus pressed to perform before company, looked terrified. Under her aunt’s monitory eye, though, there was no escape. Closing her eyes, she inflated her chest, thrust back her shoulders, and emitted a piercing, “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEeeeEEE-uh-Ee-uh-Ee-uh,” before breaking off, gasping for breath.
Roger flinched as though the sound were bamboo splinters being shoved under his fingernails and Claire’s mouth dropped open. Jemmy’s shoulders were hunched up round his ears, and he clung to his grandfather’s coat like a small blue bur. Even Jamie looked a little startled.
“Not bad,” said Mrs. Gwilty judiciously. “Perhaps it will not be a complete disgrace. I am hearing that Hiram asked you to speak a word?” she added with a disparaging glance at Roger.
“He has,” Roger replied, still hoarse, but as firmly as possible. “I am honored.”
Mrs. Gwilty did not reply to this, but merely looked him up and down, then, shaking her head, turned her back and raised her arms.
“AaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAaaaaAAAAAAAaaaIIIIeeeeeeee,” she wailed, in a voice that made Brianna feel ice crystals in her blood. “Woe, woe, woooooooooooe! AAaayaaaAAaayaaaAAhaaaaahaaa! Woe is come to the house of Crombie—Woe!”
Dutifully turning her back on them, as well, Olanna joined in with a descant wail of her own. Claire rather untactfully but practically put her fingers in her ears.
“How much did you give them?” she asked Jamie in English.
Jamie’s shoulders shook briefly, and he hastily ushered her away, a firm hand on her elbow.
Beside Brianna, Roger swallowed, the sound just audible under the noise.
“You should have had that drink,” she said to him.
“I know,” he said hoarsely, and sneezed.
“HAVE YOU EVEN heard of Seaumais Buchan?” I asked Jamie, as we picked our way across the sodden earth of the Crombie’s dooryard. “Who is he?”
“Oh, I’ve heard of him, aye,” he replied, putting an arm round me to help swing me across a fetid puddle of what looked like goat urine. “Oof. God, you’re a solid wee thing, Sassenach.”
“That’s the basket,” I replied absently. “I believe Mrs. Bug’s put lead shot in it. Or maybe only fruitcake. Who is he, then? One of the fisher-folk?”
“Aye. He’s great-uncle to Maisie MacArdle, her who’s marrit to him that was a boatbuilder. Ye recall her? Red hair and a verra long nose, six bairns.”
“Vaguely. However do you remember these things?” I demanded, but he merely smiled, and offered me his arm. I took it, and we strode gravely through the mud and the scattered straw laid down across it, the laird and his lady come to the funeral.
The door of the cabin was open despite the cold, to let the spirit of the dead go out. Fortunately, it also let a little light come in, as the cabin was crudely built and had no windows. It was also completely packed with people, most of whom had not bathed any time in the preceding four months.
I was no stranger to claustrophobic cabins or unwashed bodies, though, and since I knew that one of the bodies present was probably clean but certainly dead, I had already begun breathing through my mouth by the time one of the Crombie daughters, shawled and red-eyed, invited us in.
Grannie Wilson was laid out on the table with a candle at her head, wrapped in the shroud she had no doubt woven as a new bride; the linen cloth was yellowed and creased with age, but clean and soft in the candlelight, embroidered on the edges with a simple pattern of vine leaves. It had been carefully kept, brought from Scotland at the cost of who knew what pains.
Jamie paused at the door, removing his hat, and murmured formal condolences, which the Crombies, male and female, accepted with nods and grunts, respectively. I handed over the basket of food and nodded back, with what I hoped was a suitable expression of dignified sympathy, keeping an eye on Jemmy.
Brianna had done her best to explain to him, but I had no idea what he might make of the situation—or the corpse. He had been persuaded with some difficulty to emerge from his bonnet, and was looking round now with interest, his cowlick standing on end.
“Is that the dead lady, Grandma?” he whispered loudly to me, pointing at the body.
“Yes, dear,” I said, with an uneasy glance at old Mrs. Wilson. She looked perfectly all right, though, done up properly in her best cap with a bandage under her jaw to keep her mouth closed, dry eyelids sealed against the glimmer of the candle. I didn’t think Jemmy had ever met the old lady in life; there was no real reason for him to be upset at seeing her dead—and he’d been taken hunting regularly since he could walk; he certainly understood the concept of death. Besides, a corpse was definitely anticlimactic, after our encounter with the bean-treim. Still . . .
“We’ll pay our respects now, lad,” Jamie said quietly to him, and set him on the floor. I caught Jamie’s glance at the door, where Roger and Bree were murmuring condolences in their turn, and realized he had been waiting for them to catch up, so that they could watch him, and know what to do next.
He led Jemmy through the press of people, who gave way respectfully, and up to the table, where he laid his hand on the corpse’s chest. Oh, so it was that sort of funeral.
At some Highland funerals, it was the custom for everyone to touch the body, so that the dead person should not haunt them. I doubted that Grannie Wilson would have any interest in haunting me, but care never hurt—and I did have an uneasy memory of a skull with silver fillings in its teeth, and my encounter with what might have been its possessor, seen by corpse-light on a black mountain night. Despite myself, I glanced at the candle, but it seemed a perfectly normal thing of brown beeswax, pleasantly fragrant and leaning a little crooked in its pottery candlestick.
Steeling myself, I leaned over and laid my own hand gently on the shroud. An earthenware saucer, holding a piece of bread and a heap of salt, sat on the dead woman’s chest, and a small wooden bowl filled with dark liquid—wine?—sat beside her on the table. What with the good beeswax candle, the salt, and the bean-treim, it looked as though Hiram Crombie was trying to do right by his late mother-in-law—though I wouldn’t put it past him to thriftily reuse the salt after the funeral.
Something seemed wrong, though; an air of uneasiness curled among the cracked boots and rag-wrapped feet of the crowd like the cold draft from the door. At first I had thought it might be due to our presence, but that wasn’t it; there had been a brief exhalation of approval when Jamie approached the body.
Jamie whispered to Jemmy, then boosted him up, legs dangling, to touch the corpse. He showed no reluctance, and peered into the dead woman’s waxen face with interest.
“What’s that for?” he asked loudly, reaching for the bread. “Is she going to eat it?”
Jamie grabbed his wrist, and planted his hand firmly on the shroud instead.
“That’s for the sin-eater, a bhailach. Leave it, aye?”
“What’s a—”
“Later.” No one argued with Jamie when he used that tone of voice, and Jemmy subsided, putting his thumb back in his mouth as Jamie set him down. Bree came up and scooped him into her arms, belatedly remembering to touch the corpse herself, and murmur, “God rest you.”
Then Roger stepped forward, and there was a stir of interest among the crowd.
He looked pale, but composed. His face was lean and rather ascetic, usually saved from sternness by the gentleness of his eyes and a mobile mouth, ready to laugh. This was no time for laughter, though, and his eyes were bleak in the dim light.
He laid a hand on the dead woman’s chest, and bowed his head. I wasn’t sure whether he was praying for the repose of her soul, or for inspiration, but he stayed that way for more than minute. The crowd watched respectfully, with no sound save coughs and the clearing of throats. Roger wasn’t the only one catching a cold, I thought—and thought suddenly again of Seaumais Buchan.
“He lies fevered and his chest will kill him before the week is out.” So Mrs. Gwilty had said. Pneumonia, perhaps—or bronchitis, or even consumption. And no one had told me.
I felt a slight pang at that, equal parts annoyance, guilt, and unease. I knew the new tenants didn’t yet trust me; I had thought that I should allow them to get used to me before I started dropping in on them at random. Many of them would never have seen an English person, before coming to the colonies—and I was well aware of their attitude toward both Sassenachs and Catholics.
But evidently there was now a man dying virtually on my doorstep—and I hadn’t even known of his existence, let alone his illness.
Should I go to see him, as soon as the funeral was over? But where in bloody hell did the man live? It couldn’t be very close; I did know all the fisher-folk who had settled down the mountain; the MacArdles must be up across the ridge. I stole a look at the door, trying to judge how soon the threatening clouds would cut loose their burden of snow.
There were shufflings and the murmurs of low speech outside; more people had arrived, coming up from the nearby hollows, crowding round the door. I caught the words, “dèan caithris,” in a questioning tone, and suddenly realized what was odd about the present occasion.