“HOW OLD IS thy mother?” Rachel said to Ian. “I’d welcome her company, and to have help with the bairn would be a great relief, but thee knows better than I do what such a journey may be like.”

Ian grinned, not at the question, but at the way she said “bairn,” hesitating for an instant before saying it, as though afraid it might get away before she could clap a lid over it.

“I dinna ken for sure,” he said, in answer to her question. “She’s two years the elder of Uncle Jamie, though.”

“Oh.” Her face eased a bit at that.

“And it’s barely a year since she left Scotland and came wi’ Uncle Jamie, all the way across the ocean, and then makin’ their way hundreds of miles cross-country to Philadelphia. This journey may be a bit longer,” he coughed a little, thinking and just a bit more dangerous, “but we’ll have good horses and enough money for inns, where there are any.

“Besides,” he said, shrugging. “She says she’s comin’ with us. So she is.”

58

Telling Beads

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.