“But you’re a healer,” he said. “Or so I’ve been told in the village. Didn’t you go to see if you could help Stephen FitzHugh?”

She gave him a look of disgust. “I heal, God willing, but I don’t raise the dead from their sleep!”

“But you couldn’t be sure—”

“I told ye, Londoner, that I’d heard the Gabriel hounds. That’s all I needed to know. They’re never wrong. I’ve heard ‘em afore, when there was death walking the land. In this house. In the woods. Wherever evil strays.”

She turned and walked off, hobbling on her stick, leaving him to Hamish, who was trying to force words into his mind. But what the hell were the Gabriel hounds she’d talked of, some family banshee?

“I’ve been trying to warn you,” Hamish said grimly, “what they were. The souls of unchristened children. A child who dies before he’s blessed by the church. Unshriven. Not wanted by God—nor by the devil.”

“I don’t believe a word of it—that’s Highland nonsense!” he said aloud before he could stop himself.

The old woman turned and looked at him. And silently crossed herself.

He felt his face flush.

In the bar after lunch was an elderly man in an old but fine suit and collars and cuffs that gleamed whitely in the dimness. Several people had clustered around his bench, talking quietly and nodding at whatever he said in response. A half dozen men stood around outside in the sunshine, playing keels, their shadows flicking across the dusty glass of the windows. Four other men sat around the hearth reliving the war. Two had lost limbs—an arm, a foot. Another wore an eye patch. Except for the women speaking with the doctor, it was a male enclave.

The barkeep said, “That’s the old doctor. The father-in-law of Dr. Hawkins. Penrith’s his name. Those that don’t hold with the new ways of Dr. Hawkins still come to speak to him. But his mind’s going these days. Shame, but there it is. Age catches us all, in the end.” The barkeep must have been as old if not older than Penrith.

Rutledge, looking across at the bearded doctor, smiled to himself at the comment, then went up the stairs two at a time to his room, to get the photographs Rachel had sent him. When the doctor was finally sitting there alone, Rutledge joined him and bought him beer before opening the subject of the Trevelyan family.

“Sorrowful history, the Trevelyans had,” Penrith said, tired old eyes looking up at Rutledge. “I saw them through most of it. And held their hands when they mourned. Old Adrian died in his bed, as he should, but not the others. Sad, sad, it was. I did what I could. Young Hawkins doesn’t understand about that, he’s not a village man. I was.”