Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (42 page)

“Bring them,” he said, raising his voice enough to be heard over the crying and shouting. “Quick.”

Brianna shook her head briefly, her eyes fixed on the ruin of Amy’s face. Should the boys remember their mother like
that
?

“Bring them,” Roger said, louder. “Now.”

She gave a small jerky nod and let go of Aidan, who dashed to his mother and fell on the ground beside Bobby, clinging to him and sobbing. Bree came after him, holding Orrie and Rob by their hands, tears sheeting all their faces.

Roger took the little boys, held them in his arms, close to their mother.

“Amy,” he said, through the sobbing. “Your sons are with you. And Bobby.” He hesitated, looking at me, but at my nod let go of Orrie and laid his hand gently on her chest. “Lord God, be merciful unto us,” he whispered. “Be merciful. Hold her in the palm of Thy hand. Keep her always in the hearts of her children.”

Amy moved. Her head turned a little, toward the boys, and she opened her one eye, slowly, so slowly, as though it was an effort equal to lifting the world. Her mouth twitched once and then she died.

THERE WAS NO TIME
for delicacy. The men had brought Amy’s body down to the house and at my direction laid her on the table in my surgery. The day was hot and she was still very warm to the touch, but her body had a disconcerting inert heaviness, like a burlap bag filled with wet sand. Rigor would soon be separating her from the soft elasticity of life; I’d have to undress her before she got too stiff.

But first, I covered her face with a linen towel. There was time for that much delicacy, I thought. I was glad I’d taken the time, too, when I turned at the sound of a step on the threshold and saw Bree, still in her bloodstained hunting shirt, her face much whiter than the old sheet folded over her arm. I nodded at the counter behind me.

“Put that down and go sit with the children outside in the sun,” I said firmly. “They need someone to hold them. Where’s Roger?” She shook her head, unable to take her eyes off the table. Amy’s fichu had been pulled halfway out of her bodice and was hanging down, soaked with rapidly drying blood that left faint smears on the table. I pulled the cloth loose and dropped it into the bucket of cold water at my feet.

“Roger’s with Bobby,” she said, her voice colorless. “Fanny’s minding Mandy and the little boys for a minute. You—you’ll need help, won’t you? With—” She broke off and swallowed audibly, looking away.

“Someone will be here soon,” I said, and took a little comfort in the thought. I was familiar with death, but that didn’t mean I’d got used to it. “Your father sent Germain running for Young Ian; Rachel and Jenny will come down, too. And Jem’s gone for Gilly MacMillan. His wife will gather up the women who live along the creek.”

She nodded, seeming a little calmer, though her hands were still trembling, the folded sheet bunched between them.

“Why is Da sending for Mr. MacMillan?” she asked.

“He has two good hunting dogs,” I said evenly. “And a boar spear.”

“Holy Lord. He—they—they’re going to hunt the bear?
Now?
”

“Well, yes,” I said mildly. “Before it gets too far away. Where’s Aidan?” I added, realizing that she’d said “the little boys.” Aidan was twelve, but still qualified, in my book. “Did he go with Jem?”

“No,” she said, her voice sounding odd. “He’s with Da.”

AIDAN WAS WHITE
as milk and he kept blinking his swollen red eyes, though he’d stopped greeting. He hadn’t stopped shaking. Jamie put a hand on the lad’s shoulder and could feel the tremble coming up from the earth through Aidan’s flesh.

“I-I-I’m c-c-coming,” Aidan said, though his chin wobbled so much you could scarce understand him. “T-to hunt the b-bear.”

“Of course ye are.” Jamie squeezed the fragile shoulder and, after a moment’s hesitation, let go and turned toward the house. “Come with me,
a bhalaich,
” he said. “We’ll need to fettle ourselves before we go out.”

Every instinct he had was for avoiding the house, where Claire and the women would be laying Amy out. But he’d been younger than Aidan was now when his own mother died, and he remembered the desolation of being shut out, sent away from the house while the women opened the windows and doors, covered the mirror, and went purposefully about with bowls of water and herbs, completing the secret rituals of taking his mother away from him.

Besides, he thought bleakly, glancing down at the blanched wee lad stumbling along beside him, the boy had seen his mother dying in her blood little more than an hour ago, her face torn half away. Nothing he might see or hear now would be worse.

They stopped at the well and Jamie made Aidan drink cold water and wash his face and hands, and Jamie did likewise and said the beginning of the Consecration of the Chase for him:

“In name of the Holy Threefold as one,

In word, in deed, and in thought,

I am bathing my own hands,

In the light and in the elements of the sky.

—

“Vowing that I shall never return in my life,

Without fishing, without fowling either,

Without game, without venison down from the hill,

Without fat, without blubber from out the copse.”

Aidan was breathing hard from the shock of the cold water, but he could talk again.

“Bears have fat,” he said.

“Aye. And we will take it from him.” Jamie scooped water in his hand and, dipping three fingers into the puddle in his palm, made the Sign of the Cross on Aidan’s forehead, breast, and shoulders.

“Life be in my speech,

Sense in what I say,

The bloom of cherries on my lips,

’Til I come back again.

—

“Traversing corries, traversing forests,

Traversing valleys long and wild.

The fair white Mary still uphold me,

The Shepherd Jesu be my shield.

“Say that last bit wi’ me, lad.”

Aidan drew himself up a little and piped along,

“The fair white Mary still uphold me,

The Shepherd Jesu be my shield.”

“Well, then.” Jamie pulled out his shirttail and wiped Aidan’s face and his own. “Will ye have heard that prayer before?”

Aidan shook his head. Jamie hadn’t thought he would; Aidan’s real father, Orem McCallum, might have taught him, but Bobby Higgins was an Englishman, and while a good man in himself, he wouldn’t know the auld ways.

As though the thought had conjured him, Aidan asked seriously, “Will Daddy Bobby come with us to hunt the bear?”

Jamie sincerely hoped not; Bobby had been a soldier, but was no hunter, and in his grief and distraction might easily get himself or someone else killed. And there were the little lads to think of. But he said, “If he feels he must, then he shall. But I hope he will not.” Roger had taken Bobby, looking completely destroyed, back to the Higgins cabin.

He set the bucket on the well coping and laid a hand on Aidan’s shoulder again; it was firmer now, and the bairn’s chin had stopped quivering.

“Come on, then,” he said. “We’ll fetch my rifle and set things in order. Ian Òg and Mr. MacMillan will be here soon.”

“GO,” I SAID
to Bree, but more gently. I came and took the sheet that she was still clutching, set it down, and put my arms around her.

“I understand,” I said quietly. “She’s your friend, and you want to do what you still
can
do for her. And you don’t know why it’s her lying there and you standing here, still alive, and everything’s come apart at the seams.”

She made a small sound of assent and caught her breath in a sob. She clung tight to me for a moment, then let go. Tears were trembling on her lashes, but she was holding on to herself now, not me.

“Tell me what to do,” she said, straightening up. “I have to
do
something.”

“Take care of Amy’s children,” I said. “That’s what she’d want you to do, above all things.”

She nodded, pressing her lips together in determination—but then glanced at the still figure on the table, smelling of urine, feces, and the thick reek of torn flesh. Flies were beginning to come through the window; they flew in lazy circles, scenting opportunity, seeking a place to lay their eggs. On the body. It wasn’t Amy anymore, and the flies had come to lay claim to her.

Brianna was nearly as good as Jamie at hiding her feelings when she had to, but she wasn’t hiding anything now, and I saw the fear and anguish underneath the shock. She couldn’t bear to deal with Amy’s shattered body—and so had come to do so.
Fraser,
I thought, moved by her bravery as much as by her grief.

I picked up the other towel and slapped it on the counter, killing two flies that had been unwary enough to land near me.

“Someone will come,” I repeated. “Go. Take Fanny with you.”

IAN, NOT SURPRISINGLY, APPEARED
first, walking in through the open front door. Jamie heard the soft tread of his moccasins a moment before Ian spoke to Claire in the surgery. There was a brief exclamation of shock—Germain would have told him what was to do, but not even a Mohawk would be unmoved by the sight of Amy Higgins’s body—and then his voice dropped in a murmur of respect before the soft tread came on toward the kitchen.

“That’ll be Ian,” Jamie said to Aidan, who was very slowly and painstakingly filling cartridges on the kitchen table, tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth as he poured gunpowder from Jamie’s flask. He stopped at Jamie’s words, looking toward the door.

Ian didn’t disappoint the lad. He was carrying his own long rifle, with shot pouch and cartridge box, but had also brought a very large and wicked-looking knife, thrust through his belt unsheathed, and had a strung bow and a birch-bark quiver over his shoulder. He was shirtless, in buckskin leggings and loincloth, but had taken a moment to say his own prayers and apply his hunting paint: his forehead was red above the eyebrows and a thick white stripe ran down the bridge of his nose, with another on each side, running from cheekbone to jaw. White, he’d told Jamie, was for vengeance, or to commemorate the dead.

Aidan—who knew Ian quite well in his Scottish person—had never seen him in purely Mohawk form before. He made a small
whoof
noise, awed. Jamie hid a smile, picking up his own dirk and the oilstone on which to sharpen it.

“Ach, Ian,” he said, suddenly noting his nephew’s bare chest. “D’ye maybe ken where my claw’s gone? The bear claw the Tuscarora gave me, I mean.” He hadn’t thought of the thing in years. He’d lent it to Ian some time back, to wear on a hunting trip. But it maybe wouldn’t be a bad thing to have with him just now, if it was handy.

“Aye, I do.” Ian had sat down to fold up Aidan’s cartridges, quick and neat, and didn’t look up. “I gave it to my cousin William.”

“Your cou— Oh.” He considered Ian, who still didn’t look up. “And when was this?”

“Ach. Some time ago,” Ian said airily. “When I got him out o’ the swamp, ken. I told him ye wanted him to have it.” He did glance up then, one thin eyebrow raised, just like his father. “I wasna wrong, was I?”

“No,” Jamie said, feeling a sudden warmth, though the hairs prickled on his neck. “No, ye weren’t.”

Bluebell, who’d been nosing round the back door, suddenly turned and shot toward the front of the house, barking. A chorus of deep-voiced baying answered her from the bottom of the slope before the house.

“That’ll be Gillebride, then,” Jamie said, and sheathed his dirk. “Are we fettled, lads?”

I’D GOT AMY’S
stays off, and her skirt. The skirt wasn’t torn; it would do, with washing. Amy had no daughter who might use it, but there was always need of clothes and cloth. Someone on the Ridge would welcome it. I put it aside to wash later. The stays were badly torn at the shoulder and stiff with blood. I put them to the other side; I’d salvage the tin ribs, then put the fabric in the fire. The shift…that was torn, too, though it might be mended, or used for patching or quilting. I couldn’t see her buried in it, though; it was bloody and befouled. She had on only one light petticoat and her stockings—wash those, then, and…

I heard the baying of Gillebride’s dogs in the near distance, and the thunder of Bluebell’s feet as she raced down the hall to meet them. They should be all right together; the MacMillan dogs were both male. Bluey was a female and not in heat, and as Jamie had told me in a wry moment, dogs don’t bite bitches.

“Doesna always work the other way round, mind,” he’d said, and I didn’t quite smile at the memory, but felt the air press less heavily on me for a moment.

Then I heard a step in the hallway and looked up, thinking it was Gillebride. It wasn’t, and the air suddenly thickened in my chest.

“Mrs. Fraser.” It was the tall black figure of Mrs. Cunningham, bony and stern as the Grim Reaper, with a folded cloth over one arm. She hovered awkwardly on the threshold, and I just as awkwardly motioned her in.

“Mrs. Cunningham,” I said, and stopped, not knowing what the hell else to say to her. She cleared her throat, glanced at Amy’s half-clad corpse, then quickly away. Even though the head was covered, the mangled arm and shoulder were in plain sight, cracked and shattered bones showing sharp through the still flesh.

“I was by the creek. Your grandson passed me on his way to MacMillan’s and told me what was a-do. So I went along to Mr. Higgins and asked for his wife’s shroud.” She lifted the cloth slightly in illustration, and I saw the embroidered edges, done in greens, blues, and pinks.

“Oh.” That Amy would have her shroud already prepared hadn’t occurred to me at all—though it should have. “Er…thank you, Mrs. Cunningham. That was very thoughtful of you.”

She lifted one shoulder in a faint shrug and, taking a visibly deep breath, walked up to the table. She looked the situation over deliberately for a moment, exhaled through her nose, then reached to untie the ribbon of Amy’s shift.

“If ye’ll hold her steady, I’ll roll it down.”

I opened my mouth to protest that I didn’t need help, but then shut it again. I did, and plainly she’d had some experience of laying out the dead; any woman of her age would. We rolled the shift off Amy’s shoulders and I got one hand solidly into the bare right oxter, the damp hair there feeling disconcertingly warm and alive, and then, with an uncontrollable sense of squirm, threaded my fingers under the wet mess of the left shoulder, finding enough to grip.

So close, the odor of the bear on her was strong enough that I felt an atavistic shiver down my spine. Mrs. Cunningham did, too; she was breathing audibly through her mouth. She got the petticoat untied, though, and pulled shift and stockings off with steady hands.

“Well, then,” she said, and looking round saw that I’d put the skirt aside to wash, and added the rest of the clothes to the pile. “When the other women come, we’ll have them launder those at once,” she said, in the tone of one accustomed to give orders and have them obeyed. “We’ll not want the smell of…”

“Yes,” I said, with a perceptible edge that made her glance sharply at me. “Right now, we’ll need to clean her. Will you go into the kitchen and fetch a bucket of hot water? I’ll tear that up”—nodding at the worn-thin sheet Brianna had brought—“for binding strips.”

She compressed her lips, but in a way that suggested grim amusement at my feeble attempt to exert authority rather than offense, and left without a word.

There was a good bit of barking out front, and I heard Gillebride—his name meant “Oystercatcher,” he’d told me—calling to the dogs. I ripped the worn sheet into wide bands; we’d fasten her legs together, and her arms at her sides—insofar as was possible; I eyed the left shoulder dubiously—cloth binding her body into seemliness before we braided her hair and put her into her shroud.

Mrs. Cunningham reappeared with her sleeves rolled up, a bucket of steaming water from the cauldron in one hand and a hammer in the other, a quilt from my bed over her arm.

“There’ll be men coming to and fro in a moment’s time,” she said, with a jerk of her head toward the hallway.

“Ah,” I said. I would have closed the surgery door, save that there wasn’t one yet. She nodded, set down the bucket, took a handful of tenpenny nails from her pocket, and hung the quilt over the open doorway with a few sharp raps of the hammer.

There was plenty of light coming in at the big window, but the quilt seemed somehow to muffle both light and sound, casting the room into something like a state of reverence, despite the growing noises outside. I took a handful of dried lavender and rubbed it into the hot water, then tore sweet basil leaves and mint and tossed them in as well. To my slight surprise, Mrs. Cunningham looked over the jars on my shelves, took down the salt, and threw a small handful into the water.

“To wash away sin,” she informed me crisply, seeing my look. “And keep her ghost from walking.”

I nodded mechanically at this, feeling as though she’d dropped a pebble into the small pool of calmness I was hoarding, sending ripples of uneasiness through me.

We managed the cleansing and binding of the body in silence. She moved with a sure touch, and we worked surprisingly well together, each conscious of the other’s movements, reaching to do what was needed without being asked. Then we reached the head.

I took a breath through my mouth and lifted the towel away; there were blood spots on it, and it stuck a bit. Mrs. Cunningham jerked a little.

“I was thinking that we might just keep her head covered,” I said apologetically. “With a clean cloth, I mean.”

Mrs. Cunningham was frowning at Amy’s face, the wrinkles in her upper lip drawn in like an accordion.

“Can ye not do a bit to tidy her?”

“Well, I can stitch what’s left of the scalp back in place and we could pull some of her hair over the missing ear, but there’s nothing I can do about the…er…the…” The dislodged eyeball hung grotesquely on the crushed cheek, its surface filmed over but still very much a staring eye. “That’s why I thought…cover her face.”

Mrs. Cunningham’s head moved slowly, side to side.

“Nay,” she said softly, her own eyes fixed on Amy. “I’ve buried three husbands and four bairns myself. Ye always want to look upon their faces, one last time. Nay matter what’s happened to them.”

Frank.
I’d looked at him, and said my last goodbye. And was glad that I’d had the chance.

I nodded and reached for my surgical scissors.

“GERMAIN TOLD ME
where the bear came upon them,” Ian said. “I went along there, quick, on my way down, and I could see where it had gone through the vines, out the end o’ the wee gorge. We’ll start there, aye?”

Jamie and MacMillan nodded, and MacMillan turned to say something reproving to his dogs, who were sniffing industriously from one end of the kitchen to the other, thrusting their broad heads into the hearth and nosing the lidded slop bucket.

“Speaking of Germain,” Jamie said, suddenly aware that his grandson was missing, “where the devil is he?” It was completely unlike Germain to be absent from any interesting situation. He was much more often right in the middle of—

“Did he go with ye to look for the bear’s track?” Jamie asked sharply, interrupting Gillebride’s recriminations. Ian looked blank for a moment, recollecting, but then nodded.

“Aye, he did. But…I was sure he was just behind me as I came down…” He turned involuntarily and glanced behind him now, as though expecting Germain to spring up through the floorboards. With a deep foreboding in his heart, Jamie swung round to face Gillebride.

“Did Jem come back with ye, Gilly?”

MacMillan, a tall, soft-spoken man, took off his hat and scratched his bald pate.

“Aye,” he said slowly. “I suppose so. He ran ahead, though, whilst I was gathering the dogs. Didna see him again.”

“Crìosd eadar sinn agus olc.”
Jamie made the horns against the Devil and crossed himself hurriedly. “Christ between us and evil. Let’s go.”