His limbs had gone weak and he’d lost the feeling in his leg altogether. Without meaning it, he’d fallen to the ground, losing his hold on Murtagh’s body. Was lying flat on his back, still able to feel the rain on his face but nothing else, his sight gone. He didn’t care about the black man, about anything. The peace of death was upon him. Pain and fear had gone and even hate had seeped away.

He’d closed his eyes again now, seeing it, and imagined that he felt Murtagh’s hand, hard and callused, still holding his as they lay on the ground.

“Did I kill him?” he whispered, more to himself than to Jenny. “I did … I ken I did … but how …”

The blood. The hot blood.

“The blood—it spilled down my arm, and then I … I wasna there anymore. But when I woke, my eyes were sealed shut wi’ dried blood and that’s what made me think I was dead—I couldna see anything but a sort of dark-red light. But then later I couldna find a wound on my head. It was his blood blinding me. And he was lyin’ on me, on my leg—”

He’d opened his eyes, still explaining it to himself, and found that he was sitting on the ground, the callused hand clinging tight to his was his sister’s, and tears were running silently down her face as she watched him.

“Och,” he said, and rising to his knees gathered her off her rock and into his arms. “Dinna weep, a leannan. It’s over.”

“That’s what you think, is it?” she said, voice muffled in his shirt. She was right, he knew that. But she held him tight. And slowly, slowly the morning came back.

They sat for a little while, not speaking. The sun had come well above the treetops by now, and while the air was still fresh and sweet, there was no longer any chill in it.

“Aye, well,” he said, at last, standing up. “Do ye still want to pray?” For she still held the pearl rosary, dangling from one hand. He didn’t wait for her reply but reached into his shirt and drew out the wooden rosary that he wore about his neck.

“Oh, ye’ve got your old beads after all,” she said, surprised. “Ye didna have your rosary in Scotland, so I thought ye’d lost it. Meant to make ye a new one, but there wasna time, what with Ian …” She lifted one shoulder, the gesture encompassing the whole of the terrible months of Ian’s long dying.

He touched the beads, self-conscious. “Aye, well … I had, in a way of speaking. I … gave it to William. When he was a wee lad, and I had to leave him at Helwater. I gave him the beads for something to keep—to … remember me by.”