Written in My Own Heart's Blood

“Was she Scots?”

MacLaren looked surprised.

“Oh, aye, she was. She had the Gàidhlig. I’d have said she came from somewhere up northwest of Inverness—maybe Thurso—but there again … it wasna quite … right.”

Not quite right. Like someone out of their proper place, pretending.

“What did she look like?” Roger said. His voice was thick; he had to clear his throat and repeat himself.

MacLaren’s lips pursed but not in condemnation; it was the sort of soundless whistle of appreciation one gives at sight of something remarkable.

“Bo

“I do,” Roger said, lowering his own voice to MacLaren’s confidential level. “Did they keep to themselves, then?” If they hadn’t, surely the whole district would have known about them and quickly discovered whether they were man and wife.

MacLaren frowned.

“Aye, they did … though he was friendly enough; I met him now and again, out on the moor, and we’d have a word, and I’d always come away thinkin’ as how he was a good wee fellow, and yet when I came to tell my Maggie about it, I couldna just charge my memory wi’ anything he’d said.”

MacLaren said somehow word got round that the woman was something that wee bit odd—a root doctor, but maybe would give you a bit more than a grass cure, if you found her alone in the house… .

There was no light in the byre save the dull glow from the hearth fire next door, but, even so, Roger could see that MacLaren had grown flushed and discomfited. Roger was begi

Cranesmuir. He knew the name, had known it when McEwan said it. The MacLarens had said the healer came from Draighhearnach. Cranesmuir was in the opposite direction—and two miles farther on. Why was he going there tonight?

“There were stories. Always are, about a woman like that.” MacLaren cleared his own throat. “But she was good wi’ the grass cures—and wi’ charms, as well. Or so folk said.”

But then the man had gone, MacLaren said. No one knew where; they just didn’t see him anymore, and the woman went on as before, but now more of her visitors were men. And the women stopped taking their bairns up there, though they’d go sometimes themselves, quietly, in secret.

And then on the day before Samhain, as the sun was sinking and the great fires being built up for the evening, a woman from nearby had gone up to the lonely croft and run down again, screaming.

“She’d found the door o’ the croft standing wide, the woman and her things all gone—and a man hanging from the rooftree, stone dead wi’ a rope around his neck.”

The shock tightened Roger’s own throat. He couldn’t speak.

MacLaren sighed, head bent. A cow had come up behind him, nudging gently, and he laid one hand on her back as though seeking support from the animal, who went on placidly chewing her cud.

“It was the priest who said we should cleanse the place with fire, for it had the smell of evil about it, and no one kent the man. We couldna tell was it just a poor fellow as took his life by despair—or was it murder.”

“I … see.” Roger forced the words through the burn in his throat, and MacLaren looked up suddenly at him. He saw the man’s mouth drop open, his eyes bulging, and realized that in the warmth he’d let the quilt slide back on his shoulders. MacLaren was looking straight at his throat, where the livid and unmistakable scar of hanging must show plain in the dim red light.

MacLaren backed away, or tried to, but there was nowhere to go. He plastered himself against one beast’s shaggy flank, making a low gobbling noise. The cow seemed a

“Why come ye here, a thaibse?” he said, fists clenched but his voice low. “Whatever sin I might have done, I did naught to you. I’d nay part in your death—and I said they must bury your body beneath the hearthstone before they fired the place. The priest wouldna have ye in the kirkyard, aye?” he added, evidently fearing that the ghost of the hangit man had come to complain about the unsancitifed disposal of his mortal remains.

Roger sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, the stubble rasping against his palm. He could see several curious faces, attracted by MacLaren’s cries, peering into the shadows of the byre from the glow of the room beyond.

“Have ye got a rosary in the house, sir?” he said.



IT WAS A long and restless night. Gra

He doubted Buck had slept much better than himself, for his ancestor had rolled out of bed at first light, declaring an urgent necessity to visit the privy. Roger had as hastily arisen, saying, “I’ll help ye,” and pulled on a still-damp shirt and breeks.

He was pleased to see that Buck didn’t actually appear to need help. He walked stiffly and limped a little, but his shoulders were square and he wasn’t gasping or turning blue.

“If they think ye’re a vengeful ghost, what the devil do they think I am?” Buck inquired, the instant they were clear of the cottage. “And surely to goodness ye could ha’ just said the Lord’s Prayer once and not dragged everyone through five decades o’ the rosary and ruined the supper!”

“Mmphm.” Buck had a point there, but Roger had been too much upset at the time to think of that. Besides, he’d wanted to give them time to recover from the shock. “It wasn’t ruined,” he said crossly. “Only the neeps a bit scorched.”

“Only!” Buck echoed. “The place still reeks. And the women hate ye. They’ll put too much salt in your porridge, see if they don’t. Where d’ye think we’re going? It’s that way.”

He pointed at a path on the left that did indeed lead to the privy, this sitting in plain sight.

Roger made another testy sound but followed. He was off-kilter this morning, distracted. No wonder about why, either.

Now? He wondered, watching the door of the privy close behind Buck. It was a two-seater, but he wasn’t minded to broach what he had to say under conditions of that much intimacy, no matter how private the subject matter was.

“The healer,” he said instead through the door, choosing the simplest place to start. “McEwan. He said he’d come back today to see to ye.”

“I don’t need seeing to,” Buck snapped. “I’m fine!” Roger had known the man long enough to recognize bravado covering fear, and replied accordingly.

“Aye, right. What did it feel like?” he asked curiously. “When he put his hand on you?”

Silence from the privy.

“Did ye feel anything?” he asked, after the silence had lengthened well past any time required for natural functions.

“Maybe,” said Buck’s voice, gruff and reluctant. “Maybe no. I fell asleep whilst he was tapping on my chest like a yaffle after tree grubs. Why?”

“Did you understand what it was he said to ye? When he touched you?” Buck had been a lawyer in his own time; he must have studied Latin.