“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.”

HOW OLD WAS Mrs. Cunningham? I wondered. She looked older with her clothes on. Three husbands, four children—but death was a casual and frequent visitor in these days. Her hands were old, with thick blue veins and knobbed joints, but still agile; she blotted the blood away with a damp cloth, brushed the soft brown hair from the intact side of Amy’s skull, and, arranging it carefully to hide as much damage as she could, braided it into a single thick plait that she laid gently on Amy’s breast.