“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?”