“From a human, you mean?” Instinctively, she wiped her hand on the side of her thigh, though she had touched nothing.

He nodded, and squatted beside her, studying the charred remains. There were blackened lumps there, too—though she thought these were the remains of some plant material; one was greenish, maybe a stem of something, incompletely burned.

Jamie bent low, sniffing at the burned remains. Instinctively, Brianna drew a deep breath through her nose in imitation—then snorted, trying to get rid of the smell. It was disconcerting: a reek of char, overlaid with something bitter and chalky—and that in turn overlaid with a sort of pungent scent that reminded her of medicine.

“Where could they have come from?” she asked, also low-voiced—though Jemmy and Germain had begun pelting each other with mudballs, and wouldn’t have noticed if she’d shouted.

“I havena noticed anyone missing a hand, have you?” Jamie glanced up, giving her a half-smile. She didn’t return it.

“Not walking around, no. But if they aren’t walking around—” She swallowed, trying to ignore the half-imagined taste of bitter herbs and burning. “Where’s the rest? Of the body, I mean.”

That word, “body,” seemed to bring the whole thing into a new and nasty focus.

“Where’s the rest of that finger, I wonder?” Jamie was frowning at the blackened smudge. He moved a knuckle toward it, and she saw what he had seen: a paler smudge within the circle of the fire, where part of the ashes had been swept away. There were three fingers, she saw, still swallowing repeatedly. Two were intact, the bones gray-white and spectral among the ashes. Two joints of the third were gone, though; only the slender last phalanx remained.

“An animal?” She glanced round for traces, but there were no pawprints on the surface of the rock—only the muddy smudges left by the little boys’ bare feet.

Vague visions of cannibalism were beginning to stir queasily in the pit of her stomach, though she rejected the notion at once.

“You don’t think Ian—” She stopped abruptly.

“Ian?” Her father looked up, astonished. “Why should Ian do such a thing?”

“I don’t think he would,” she said, taking hold of common sense. “Not at all. It was just a thought—I’d heard that the Iroquois sometimes … sometimes …” She nodded at the charred bones, unwilling to articulate the thought further. “Um … maybe a friend of Ian’s? Uh … visiting?”

Jamie’s face darkened a little, but he shook his head.

“Nay, there’s the smell of the Highlands about this. The Iroquois will burn an enemy. Or cut bits off him, to be sure. But not like that.” He pointed at the bones with his chin, in the Highland way. “This is a private business, ken? A witch—or one of their shamans, maybe—might do a thing like that; not a warrior.”

“I haven’t seen any Indians of any kind lately. Not on the Ridge. Have you?”

He looked at the burned smudge a moment longer, frowning, then shook his head.

“No, nor anyone missing a few fingers, either.”

“You’re sure they’re human?” She studied the bones, trying for other possibilities. “Maybe from a small bear? Or a big coon?”

“Maybe,” he said flatly, but she could tell he said it only for her sake. He was sure.

“Mama!” The patter of bare feet on the rock behind her was succeeded by a tug at her sleeve. “Mama, we’re hungry!”

“Of course you are,” she said, rising to meet the demand, but still gazing abstractedly at the charred remnants. “You haven’t eaten in nearly an hour. What did you—” Her gaze drifted slowly from the fire to her son, then snapped abruptly, focusing on the two little boys, who stood grinning at her, covered from head to foot in mud.

“Look at you!” she said, dismay tempered by resignation. “How could you possibly get that filthy?”

“Oh, it’s easy, lass,” her father assured her, grinning as he rose to his feet. “Easy cured, too, though.” He bent, and seizing Germain by the back of shirt and seat of breeks, heaved him neatly off the rock and into the pool below.

“Me, too, me, too! Me, too, Grandda!” Jemmy was dancing up and down in excitement, spattering clods of mud in all direction.

“Oh, aye. You, too.” Jamie bent and grabbed Jem round the waist, launching him high into the air in a flutter of shirt before Brianna could cry out.

“He can’t swim!”

This protest coincided with a huge splash, as Jem hit the water and promptly sank like a rock. She was striding toward the edge, prepared to dive in after him, when her father put a hand on her arm to stop her.

“Wait a bit,” he said. “How will ye ken whether he swims or not, if ye dinna let him try?”

Germain was already arrowing his way toward shore, his sleek blond head dark with water. Jemmy popped up behind him, though, splashing and spluttering, and Germain dived, turned like an otter, and came up alongside.

“Kick!” he called to Jemmy, churning up a huge spray in illustration. “Go on your back!”

Jemmy ceased flailing, went on his back, and kicked madly. His hair was plastered over his face and the spray of his efforts must have obscured any remnants of vision—but he went on valiantly kicking, to encouraging whoops from Jamie and Germain.

The pool was no more than ten feet across, and he reached the shallows on the opposite bank within seconds, beaching among the rocks by virtue of crashing headfirst into one. He stopped, thrashing feebly in the shallows, then bounced to his feet, showering water, and shoved the wet hair out of his face. He looked amazed.

“I can swim!” he shouted. “Mama, I can swim!”

“That’s wonderful!” she called, torn between sharing his ecstatic pride, the urge to rush home and tell Roger about it—and dire visions of Jemmy now leaping heedlessly into bottomless ponds and rock-jagged rapids, under the reckless delusion that he could indeed swim. But he’d gotten his feet wet, in no uncertain terms; there was no going back.

“Come here!” She bent toward him, clapping her hands. “Can you swim back to me? Come on, come here!”

He looked blankly at her for an instant, then around him at the rippling water of the pool. The blaze of excitement in his face died.

“I forget,” he said, and his mouth curled down, fat with sudden woe. “I forget how!”

“Fall down and kick!” Germain bellowed helpfully, from his perch on the rock. “You can do it, cousin!”

Jemmy took one or two blundering steps into the water, but stopped, lip trembling, terror and confusion starting to overwhelm him.

“Stay there, a chuisle! I’m coming!” Jamie called, and dove cleanly into the pool, a long pale streak beneath the water, bubbles streaming from hair and breeks. He popped up in front of Jemmy in an explosion of breath and shook his head, flinging strands of wet red hair out of his face.

“Come along then, man,” he said, scooting round on his knees in the shallows, so that his back was to Jemmy. He looked back, patting his own shoulder. “Take hold of me here, aye? We’ll swim back together.”

And they did, kicking and splashing in ungainly dog paddle, Jemmy’s shrieks of excitement echoed by Germain, who had leaped into the water to paddle alongside.

Hauled out onto the rock, the three of them lay puddled, gasping and laughing at her feet, water spreading in pools around them.

“Well, you are cleaner,” she said judiciously, moving her foot away from a spreading streamlet. “I’ll admit that much.”

“Of course we are.” Jamie sat up, wringing out the long tail of his hair. “It occurs to me, lass, that there’s maybe a better way to do what ye want.”

“What I w—oh. You mean the water?”

“Aye, that.” He sniffed, and rubbed the back of his hand under his nose. “I’ll show ye, if ye come up to the house after supper.”

“What’s that, Grandda?” Jemmy had got to his feet, wet hair standing up in red spikes, and was looking curiously at Jamie’s back. He put out a tentative finger and traced one of the long, curving scars.