“Mr. Cloudtree,” he said, and paused to wipe his forearm across his blood-slimed face. “I trust we see ye well, and your family?”

“They’re well enough,” the young man answered, keeping a wary eye on me and the wooden shovel I’d seized. “And since I got the chance, ma’am, I meant to thank you for it. For my babies, I mean.”

“Oh,” I said, rather blankly. Cloudtree. The pieces of memory fell into place around that name. The fecund smell of the byre, the swamp of blood and birthwater, brought back that night out of time in a small cabin, the endless effort, and the timeless forever when I held a small blue light in my hands, praying with heart and soul for it not to go out. I swallowed.

“You’re very welcome, Mr. Cloudtree,” I said. Aaron. That was the name of Agnes’s nasty stepfather: Aaron Cloudtree. I eyed him with much less favor, but he didn’t notice, his attention fixed on Jamie and the scene before us.

“A nice bit of work there, man,” he said to Jamie, nodding approvingly at Rosy and her calf, the latter looking round-eyed and bewildered, its hair swirled in all directions. “Near as good as your wife’s.”

“Taing,” Jamie said, and bent to pick up the grimy linen towel, wiping his face as he stood. “What brings ye to us at this time o’ the night, Mr. Cloudtree?”

“I come earlier, but you was at table,” Cloudtree said, shrugging. “You had the old witch there; I couldn’t’ve spoke before her.”

Jamie glanced at me and settled himself, slowly wiping his hands.

“Speak now,” he said.

“The old witch’s son, Cunningham. You know he’s been trading, down to the Cherokee villages, just the other side o’ the Line?”

Jamie nodded, eyes fixed on Cloudtree’s face. He was mixed blood, a handsome man with silky long brown hair, though with a petulant curve to his mouth.

“Not everybody listens to him,” Cloudtree assured him. “But he’s got some few men down there, maybe twenty, will follow him. He calls ’em his militia, but he ain’t fought Indians before or he’d know better. They take his guns, his powder, and his medals, though, and they’d likely do what he asked—for a while.”

“What is it that he’s asking?” Jamie had stopped wiping his hands and now held the towel twisted between them.