“I’ve brought ye a wee bit to eat, a leannan,” she said briskly, nudging the barely touched bowl of parritch and plate of cold toast aside to make room for the fresh provisions. “Ye’re no catching, are ye?”

Barely waiting for my shake of the head, she leaned over the bed and gently decanted Henri-Christian into my arms. Undiscriminatingly friendly as always, he butted his head under my chin, nuzzled into my chest, and began mouthing my knuckles, his sharp little baby teeth making small dents in my skin.

“Hallo, what’s happened here?” I frowned, smoothing the soft brown licks of baby hair off his rounded brow, where the yellowing stain of an ugly bruise showed at his hairline.

“The spawn of the de’il tried to kill the poor wean,” Mrs. Bug informed me, mouth pulled tight. “And would have done, too, save for Roger Mac, bless him.”

“Oh? Which spawn was this?” I asked, familiar with Mrs. Bug’s methods of description.

“Some of the fishers’ weans,” Jamie said. He put out a finger and touched Henri-Christian’s nose, snatched it away as the baby grabbed for it, then touched his nose again. Henri-Christian giggled and grabbed his own nose, entranced by the game.

“The wicked creatures tried to drown him,” Mrs. Bug amplified. “Stole the puir wee laddie in his basket and set him adrift in the creek!”

“I shouldna think they meant to drown him,” Jamie said mildly, still absorbed in the game. “If so, they wouldna have troubled wi’ the basket, surely.”

“Hmph!” was Mrs. Bug’s response to this piece of logic. “They didna mean to do him any good,” she added darkly.

I had been taking a quick inventory of Henri-Christian’s physique, finding several more healing bruises, a small scabbed cut on one heel, and a scraped knee.

“Well, you’ve been bumped about a bit, haven’t you?” I said to him.

“Ump. Heeheehee!” said Henri-Christian, vastly entertained by my explorations.

“Roger saved him?” I asked, glancing up at Jamie.

He nodded, one side of his mouth turning up a little.

“Aye. I didna ken what was going on, ’til wee Joanie rushed up to me, shouting as they’d taken her brother—but I got there in time to see the end of the matter.”

The boys had set the baby’s basket afloat in the trout pool, a wide, deep spot in the creek, where the water was fairly quiet. Made of stoutly woven reeds, the basket had floated—long enough for the current to push it toward the outfall from the pool, where the water ran swiftly through a stretch of rocks, before plunging over a three-foot fall, down into a tumbling churn of water and boulders.

Roger had been building a rail fence, within earshot of the creek. Hearing boys shouting and Félicité’s steam-whistle shrieks, he had dropped the rail he was holding and rushed down the hill, thinking that she was being tormented.

Instead, he had burst from the trees just in time to see Henri-Christian, in his basket, tip slowly over the edge of the outfall and start bumping crazily from rock to rock, spinning in the current and taking on water.

Running down the bank and launching himself in a flat dive, Roger had landed full-length in the creek just below the fall, in time for Henri-Christian, bawling with terror, to drop from his sodden basket, plummet down the fall, and land on Roger, who grabbed him.

“I was just in time to see it,” Jamie informed me, grinning at the memory. “And then to see Roger Mac rise out o’ the water like a triton, wi’ duckweed streaming from his hair, blood runnin’ from his nose, and the wee lad clutched tight in his arms. A terrible sight, he was.”

The miscreant boys had followed the basket’s career, yelling along the banks, but were now struck dumb. One of them moved to flee, the others starting up like a flight of pigeons, but Roger had pointed an awful finger at them and bellowed, “Sheas!” in a voice loud enough to be heard over the racket of the creek.

Such was the force of his presence, they did stay, frozen in terror.

Holding them with his glare, Roger had waded almost to the shore. There, he squatted and cupped a handful of water, which he poured over the head of the shrieking baby—who promptly quit shrieking.

“I baptize thee, Henri-Christian,” Roger had bellowed, in his hoarse, cracked voice. “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost! D’ye hear me, wee bastards? His name is Christian! He belongs to the Lord! Trouble him again, ye lot of scabs, and Satan will pop up and drag ye straight down screaming—TO HELL!”

He stabbed an accusing finger once more at the boys, who this time did break and run, scampering wildly into the brush, pushing and falling in their urge to escape.

“Oh, dear,” I said, torn between laughter and dismay. I looked down at Henri-Christian, who had lately discovered the joys of thumb-sucking and was absorbed in further study of the art. “That must have been impressive.”

“It impressed me, to be sure,” Jamie said, still grinning. “I’d no notion Roger Mac had it in him to preach hellfire and damnation like that. The lad’s a great roar to him, cracked voice and all. He’d have a good audience, did he do it for a Gathering, aye?”

“Well, that explains what happened to his voice,” I said. “I wondered. Do you think it was only mischief, though? Them putting the baby in the creek?”

“Oh, it was mischief, sure enough,” he said, and cupped a big hand gently round Henri-Christian’s head. “Not just boys’ mischief, though.”

Jamie had caught one of the fleeing boys as they hurtled past him, grabbing him by the neck and quite literally scaring the piss out of the lad. Walking the boy firmly into the wood, he’d pinned him hard against a tree and demanded to know the meaning of this attempted murder.

Trembling and blubbering, the boy had tried to excuse it, saying that they hadn’t meant any harm to the wean, truly! They’d only wanted to see him float—for their parents all said he was demon-born, and everyone kent that those born of Satan floated, because the water would reject their wickedness. They’d taken the baby in his basket and put that into the water, because they were afraid to touch him, fearing his flesh would burn them.

“I told him I’d burn him myself,” Jamie said with a certain grimness, “and did.” He’d then dismissed the smarting lad, with instructions to go home, change his breeks, and inform his confederates that they were expected in Jamie’s study before supper to receive their own share of retribution—or else Himself would be coming round to their houses after supper, to thrash them before their parents’ eyes.

“Did they come?” I asked, fascinated.

He gave me a look of surprise.

“Of course. They took their medicine, and then we went to the kitchen and had bread and honey. I’d told Marsali to bring the wee lad, and after we’d eaten, I took him on my knee, and had them all come and touch him, just to see.”

He smiled lopsidedly.

“One of the lads asked me was it true, what Mr. Roger said, about the wean belonging to the Lord? I told him I certainly wouldna argue with Mr. Roger about that—but whoever else he belonged to, Henri-Christian belongs to me, as well, and best they should remember it.”

His finger trailed slowly down Henri-Christian’s round, smooth cheek. The baby was nearly asleep now, heavy eyelids closing, a tiny, glistening thumb half in, half out of his mouth.

“I’m sorry I missed that,” I said softly, so as not to wake him. He’d grown much warmer, as sleeping babies did, and heavy in the curve of my arm. Jamie saw that I was having difficulty holding him, and took him from me, handing him back to Mrs. Bug, who had been bustling quietly round the room, tidying, all the while listening with approval to Jamie’s account.

“Oh, ’twas something to see,” she assured me in a whisper, patting Henri-Christian’s back as she took him. “And the lads all poking their fingers out to touch the bairnie’s wee belly, gingerlike, as if they meant to prod a hot potato, and him squirmin’ and giggling like a worm wi’ the fits. The wicked little gomerels’ eyes were big as sixpences!”