“It was the priest who said we should cleanse the place with fire, for it had the smell of evil about it, and no one kent the man. We couldna tell was it just a poor fellow as took his life by despair—or was it murder.”
“I . . . see.” Roger forced the words through the burn in his throat, and MacLaren looked up suddenly at him. He saw the man’s mouth drop open, his eyes bulging, and realized that in the warmth he’d let the quilt slide back on his shoulders. MacLaren was looking straight at his throat, where the livid and unmistakable scar of hanging must show plain in the dim red light.
MacLaren backed away, or tried to, but there was nowhere to go. He plastered himself against one beast’s shaggy flank, making a low gobbling noise. The cow seemed annoyed by this and brought her hoof down solidly on MacLaren’s foot. The consequent anguish and fury at least brought MacLaren out of his fright, and when he had extricated himself—by means of thumps and curses—he turned bravely on Roger, jaw thrust out.
“Why come ye here, a thaibse?” he said, fists clenched but his voice low. “Whatever sin I might have done, I did naught to you. I’d nay part in your death—and I said they must bury your body beneath the hearthstone before they fired the place. The priest wouldna have ye in the kirkyard, aye?” he added, evidently fearing that the ghost of the hangit man had come to complain about the unsancitifed disposal of his mortal remains.
Roger sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, the stubble rasping against his palm. He could see several curious faces, attracted by MacLaren’s cries, peering into the shadows of the byre from the glow of the room beyond.
“Have ye got a rosary in the house, sir?” he said.
IT WAS A long and restless night. Grannie Wallace had snatched the children off Buck’s bed, as though fearing he might devour them the moment her back was turned, and put them to bed with her in the trundle, while the older children slept either with their parents or rolled up in quilts by the hearth. Roger shared the pariah’s bed with Buck, for while his ability to hold the rosary in his hand, kiss the crucifix, and then lead the family in saying the rosary had—barely—kept Angus MacLaren from throwing him out into the night and pissing on the gateposts to keep him from coming back in, it hadn’t made him much more popular.
He doubted Buck had slept much better than himself, for his ancestor had rolled out of bed at first light, declaring an urgent necessity to visit the privy. Roger had as hastily arisen, saying, “I’ll help ye,” and pulled on a still-damp shirt and breeks.
He was pleased to see that Buck didn’t actually appear to need help. He walked stiffly and limped a little, but his shoulders were square and he wasn’t gasping or turning blue.
“If they think ye’re a vengeful ghost, what the devil do they think I am?” Buck inquired, the instant they were clear of the cottage. “And surely to goodness ye could ha’ just said the Lord’s Prayer once and not dragged everyone through five decades o’ the rosary and ruined the supper!”
“Mmphm.” Buck had a point there, but Roger had been too much upset at the time to think of that. Besides, he’d wanted to give them time to recover from the shock. “It wasn’t ruined,” he said crossly. “Only the neeps a bit scorched.”
“Only!” Buck echoed. “The place still reeks. And the women hate ye. They’ll put too much salt in your porridge, see if they don’t. Where d’ye think we’re going? It’s that way.”
He pointed at a path on the left that did indeed lead to the privy, this sitting in plain sight.
Roger made another testy sound but followed. He was off-kilter this morning, distracted. No wonder about why, either.
Now? He wondered, watching the door of the privy close behind Buck. It was a two-seater, but he wasn’t minded to broach what he had to say under conditions of that much intimacy, no matter how private the subject matter was.
“The healer,” he said instead through the door, choosing the simplest place to start. “McEwan. He said he’d come back today to see to ye.”
“I don’t need seeing to,” Buck snapped. “I’m fine!” Roger had known the man long enough to recognize bravado covering fear, and replied accordingly.
“Aye, right. What did it feel like?” he asked curiously. “When he put his hand on you?”
Silence from the privy.
“Did ye feel anything?” he asked, after the silence had lengthened well past any time required for natural functions.
“Maybe,” said Buck’s voice, gruff and reluctant. “Maybe no. I fell asleep whilst he was tapping on my chest like a yaffle after tree grubs. Why?”
“Did you understand what it was he said to ye? When he touched you?” Buck had been a lawyer in his own time; he must have studied Latin.
“Did you?” A slight creak of wood and a rustling of cloth.
“I did. And I said it back to him, just before he left.”
“I was asleep,” Buck repeated doggedly. Clearly he didn’t want to talk about the healer, but he wasn’t going to have a choice about that, Roger thought grimly.
“Come out of there, will ye? The MacLarens are all out in the dooryard, crossing their legs.” He glanced over his shoulder and was surprised to see that in fact the MacLarens were out in the dooryard.
Not all of them—it was only Angus and a tall boy, plainly a MacLaren, too, from the shape of him. He seemed familiar—had he been at the house the evening before? They were bent close together, talking in evident excitement, and the boy was pointing off toward the distant road.