Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (75 page)

JAMIE DIDN’T BOTHER WALKING
softly. Bears weren’t afraid of anything. And it would likely be chance alone that determined who saw whom first.

The shadows that overlay the trail to the upper meadow they called
Feur-milis
were still black with the night’s cold. The yellowing trees that edged the path were slick and heavy with last night’s rain, and Jamie had pulled his plaid up over his head to keep the drips out. Old and worn as his plaid was, it was still warm and still shed water.
I should have told Claire I want to be buried in it if a bear gets the better of me; it’ll be cozy against the grave-damp.

But then he thought of Amy Higgins, and crossed himself. He came out of the shadows into the high meadow, misty in the early morning. Three does grazing on the far side looked up at him, startled by the intrusion, then disappeared with a crash of shrubbery.

That answered one question, then: no bears were nearby. At this time of year, a bear likely wouldn’t bother with deer—the streams teemed with fish and the woods were still full of everything a bear thought tasty, from grubs and mushrooms to bee trees full of honey (and he did hope his present quarry might have found one of those recently; it gave a faint soft smell to the grease)—but deer had very set opinions of carnivores in general, and didn’t pause to reckon the odds when one showed up.

He quartered the meadow, then walked slowly round the edge looking for bear sign, but found nothing more than a crumbled pile of old droppings under a pine and claw marks on a big alder—made recently, but the sap had dried hard. Jo had seen a bear in the meadow five days ago, he said; clearly it hadn’t been back since.

Jamie stood still for a moment, lifting his face to the breeze that stirred the grass tops. A faint tang on the air: not bear. A buck deer close by, not yet in full rut, but interested in the does.

More crashing made him turn, but the eager chorus of
mehh-hh
s told him who it was long before his sister came up over the lip of the trail with four young nanny goats on a long rope. She had a gun over her shoulder and was looking keenly round.

“And what d’ye mean to do wi’ that,
a phiuthair
?” he asked conversationally. She hadn’t seen him in the shadows and swung round, startled, the fowling piece pointed straight at him.

He took a hasty step to the side, just in case it should be loaded.

“Dinna shoot, it’s me!”

“Gomerel,” she said, lowering her gun. “What d’ye mean, what do I mean to do with it? How many things can ye do with a gun?”

“Well, if ye’re after bear, I think your piece might give him a nosebleed, but not much more,” he said, nodding at the gun in her hand. His own rifle was still slung on his shoulder, loaded and primed. Not that it would likely stop a charging bear, but if the creature was only suspicious, a shot might make it keep its distance.

“Bear? Oh, is that what ye’re up to. Claire wondered.” She loosed the eager goats, and they dived headfirst into the thick grass like ducks in a millpond.

“Did she, then.” He kept his voice casual.

“She didna say so,” his sister said frankly. “But she saw your gun was gone, while we were makin’ breakfast, and she stopped dead, only for an instant.”

His heart squeezed a little. He hadn’t wanted to wake Claire when he left in the dark, but he should have told her last night that he meant to see if he could get upon the trail of the bear Jo Beardsley had seen. There’d been little time for hunting while they worked to get the roof raised before winter—they needed the meat and grease badly. Besides, they had only a few quilts and one woolen trade blanket he’d got from a Moravian trader. A good bear rug would be a comfort to Claire in the deep cold nights; she felt the cold more now than the last time they’d spent a winter on the Ridge.

“She’s all right,” his sister added, and he felt her interested gaze on his own face. “She only wondered, ken.”

He nodded, wordless. It might be a wee while yet before Claire could wake to find him gone out with a gun and think nothing of it.

He took a breath and saw it wisp out white, vanishing instantly, though the new sun was already warm on his shoulders.

“Aye, and what are ye doing up here, yourself? It’s a far piece to walk for forage.” One of the goats had come up for air and was nosing the hanging end of his leather belt in an interested manner. He tucked it up out of reach and kneed the goat gently away.

“I’m fattening them to stand the winter,” she said, nodding at the nosy nanny. “Maybe breed them, if they’re ready. They like the grass better than the forage in the woods, and it’s easier to keep an eye on them.”

“Ye ken well enough Fanny would mind them for ye. Is wee Oggy drivin’ ye mad?” The baby had vigorous lungs. You could hear him at the Big House when the wind was right. “Or are ye drivin’ Rachel mad yourself?”

“I like goats,” she said, ignoring his question and shoving aside a pair of questing lips nibbling after the fringe of her shawl. “
Teich a’ ghobhair.
Sheep are goodhearted things, when they’re not tryin’ to knock ye over, but they’re no bright. A goat has a mind of its own.”

“Aye, and so do you. Ian always said ye liked the goats because they’re just as stubborn as you are.”

She gave him a long, level look.

“Pot,” she said succinctly.

“Kettle,” he replied, flicking a plucked grass stem toward her nose. She grabbed it out of his hand and fed it to the goat.

“Mmphm,” she said. “Well, if ye must know, I come up here to think, now and then. And pray.”

“Oh, aye?” he said, but she pressed her lips together for a moment and then turned to look across the meadow, shading her eyes against the slant of the morning sun.

Well enough,
he thought.
She’ll say whatever it is when she’s ready.

“There’s a bear up here, is there?” she asked, turning back to him. “Shall I take the goats back down?”

“Not likely. Jo Beardsley saw it a few days ago, here in the meadow, but there’s no fresh sign.”

Jenny thought that over for a moment, then sat down on a lichened rock, spreading her skirts out neatly. The goats had gone back to their grazing, and she raised her face to the sun, closing her eyes.

“Only a fool would hunt a bear alone,” she said, her eyes still closed. “Claire told me that last week.”

“Did she?” he said dryly. “Did she tell ye the first time I killed a bear, I did it alone, with my dirk?
And
she hit me in the heid wi’ a fish whilst I was doin’ it?”

She opened her eyes and gave him a look.

“She didna say a fool canna be lucky,” she pointed out. “And if you didna have the luck o’ the devil himself, ye’d have been dead six times over by now.”

“Six?” He frowned, disturbed, and her brow lifted in surprise.

“I wasna really counting,” she said. “It was only a guess. What is it,
a ghràidh
?”

That casual “Oh, love,” caught him unexpectedly in a tender place, and he coughed to hide it.

“Nothing,” he said, shrugging. “Only, when I was young in Paris, a fortune-teller told me I’d die nine times before my death. D’ye think I should count the fever after Laoghaire shot me?”

She shook her head definitely.

“Nay, ye wouldna have died even had Claire not come back wi’ her wee needle. Ye would have got up and gone after her within a day or two.”

He smiled.

“I might’ve.”

His sister made a small noise in her throat that might have been laughter or derision.

They were silent for a moment, both with heads lifted, listening to the wood. The dripping had ceased now, and you could hear a treepie close by, with a call exactly like a rusty hinge opening. Then there was a loud
quah-quah
as a bird called from somewhere behind him, and he saw Jenny look up over his shoulder wide-eyed.

“Is that a magpie?” she said. In the Highlands, you always listened for magpies, because they were omen birds—and if you heard one, you hoped to hear another.
One for sorrow…two for mirth…

“No,” he said, reassuring. “I dinna think there are proper magpies in these mountains. That’s no but a kind of yaffle. Aye—see him there?” He nodded, and she looked over her shoulder to the grayish bird with a scarlet slash at its throat, clinging to a swaying pine branch, a beady eye fixed on the ground.

Jenny relaxed and drew breath, and, taking up the conversation where she’d left it, asked, “D’ye hold it against me, that I made ye marry Laoghaire?”

He gave her a look.

“What makes ye think ye could make me do
anything
I didna want to, ye wee fussbudget?”

“What the devil is a fussbudget?” she demanded, frowning up at him.

“A bag of nuisance, so far as I can tell,” he admitted. “Jemmy calls Mandy that.”

A sudden dimple appeared near Jenny’s mouth, but she didn’t actually laugh. “Aye,” she said. “Ye ken what I mean.”

“I do,” he said. “And I don’t. Hold it against ye, I mean. She didna actually kill me, after all.”

One of the goats squatted, a few feet away, and let fall a dainty shower of neat black pellets. They steamed briefly, and he caught the oddly pleasant warm scent for an instant before it vanished in the chill.

“I wonder how it is goats are so neat about it,” Jenny said, watching, too. “Compared with coos, I mean.”

“Och, ye’d want to be asking Claire about that,” he told her. “If it’s a matter of innards, she kens nearly as much as God about it.”

Jenny laughed, and he realized belatedly that he’d seen no goat droppings at all in his survey of the meadow. She hadn’t been bringing her nannies up here regularly, then. And therefore…she’d come after him a-purpose. She had a thing to tell him, maybe, in private.

He cleared his throat and touched his chest, where the wooden rosary hung beneath his shirt.

“Pray, ye said. D’ye want to tell the beads together, then? Like we used to?”

She looked surprised, and for a moment dubious. But then made up her mind and nodded, reaching into her pocket.

“Aye, I would. And since ye mention…there was a thing I meant to ask ye, Jamie.”

“Aye, what?”

To his surprise, she drew out a string of gleaming pearls, the gold crucifix and medal bright in the rising sun.

“Ye brought your good rosary?” he asked. “I didna ken that—thought ye’d have left it for one of your lasses.” “Good” was putting it lightly. That rosary had been made in France and likely cost as much as a good saddle horse—if not more. It was their mother’s rosary—Brian had given it to Jenny when he’d given Ellen’s pearl necklace to Jamie.

His sister grimaced and looked halfway apologetic. “If I gave it to any one o’ them, the others would take it amiss. I dinna want them to be fighting over such a thing.”

“Aye, you’re right about that.” He squatted down by her, reached out a finger, and gently touched the softly bumpy little beads; it was made of Scotch pearls, like the necklace he’d given Claire. “Where did Mam get it, d’ye know? I never thought to ask, when I was wee.”

“Well, ye wouldn’t, would ye? When ye’re wee, Mam and Da are just Mam and Da, and everything’s just what it’s always been.” She gathered the beads up into the palm of her hand, shoogling them into a little pile. “I do ken where this came from, though; Da told me when he gave it to me. D’ye think that doe’s comin’ in heat?” She squinted suddenly at one of the nanny goats, who had raised her head and let out a long, piercing bleat. Jamie gave the animal an eye.

“Aye, maybe. She’s waggling her tail. But it’s maybe just she smells the buck deer in yonder grove.” He lifted his chin at the grove of sugar maples, gone half scarlet already, though none of the leaves had fallen. “It’s early for rut, but if I can smell him, so can she.”

His sister lifted her face to the light breeze and breathed in deep. “Aye? I dinna smell anything, but I’ll take your word. Da always said ye had a nose like a truffle pig.”

He snorted.

“Aye, right. So what did Da say to you, then? About Mam’s rosary.”

“Aye, well. He was jealous, he said. She wouldna ever say who’d sent her the necklace, ken.”

“Oh, aye—do
you
know?”

She shook her head, looking interested. “You do?”

“I do. A man named Marcus MacRannoch—one of her suitors from Leoch, and a gallant man; he’d bought them for her, hoping to wed her, but she saw Da and was awa’ with him before MacRannoch could speak to her. He said—well, Claire said he said,” he corrected, “that he’d thought of them so often round her bonnie neck, he couldna think of them anywhere else, and so sent them to her for a wedding present.”

Jenny rounded her lips in interest.

“Oo, so that’s the way of it. Well, Da kent it was another man, and as I say, he said he was jealous—they hadna been marrit long, and he maybe wasna quite sure she thought she’d made a good bargain, takin’ up wi’ him. So he sold a good field—to Geordie MacCallum, aye?—and gave the money to Murtagh, to go and buy a wee bawbee for Mam. He meant to give it her when the babe was born—Willie, aye?” She lifted the crucifix and kissed it gently, in blessing of their brother.

“God only kens where Murtagh got this—” She poured the rosary from one hand to the other, with a slithering sound. “But the words on the medal are French.”