The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [490]
Kezzie’s expression throughout this recital hadn’t changed; I wasn’t sure how much of it he had heard, but he didn’t appear surprised. His hand rested on his twin’s arm for a moment, then slid off, reaching for a skewer of meat.
Brianna’s laughter had subsided, and she had been listening to Josiah’s confession with a furrowed brow.
“But you didn’t—I mean, I’m sure you didn’t take the baby in its cradleboard. And you didn’t kill the woman who was partly eaten . . . did you?”
Josiah blinked, though he seemed more baffled than shocked by the question.
“Oh, no. Why’d I do that? You don’t think I ate ’em, do ye?” He smiled at that, an incongruous dimple appearing in one cheek. “Mind, I been hungry enough now and then as I might consider it, if I happened on somebody dead—providin’ it was fairly recent,” he added judiciously. “But not hungry enough as I’d kill someone a-purpose.”
Brianna cleared her throat, with something startlingly like one of Jamie’s Scottish noises.
“No, I didn’t think you ate them,” she said dryly. “I just thought that if someone happened to have killed them—for some other reason—the bear could have come along and gnawed on the bodies.”
Peter nodded thoughtfully, seeming interested but unfazed by the assorted confessions.
“Aye, a bear’ll do that,” he said. “They’re no picky eaters, bears. Carrion is fine by them.”
Jamie nodded in response, but his attention was still fixed on Josiah.
“Aye, I’ve heard that, forbye. But Tsatsa’wi said he did see the bear take his friend—so it does kill people, no?”
“Well, it killed that one,” Josiah agreed. There was an odd tone to his voice, though, and Jamie’s look sharpened. He lifted a brow at Josiah, who worked his lips slowly in and out, deciding something. He glanced at Kezzie, who smiled at him. Kezzie, I saw, had a dimple in his left cheek, while Josiah’s was in the right.
Josiah sighed and turned back to face Jamie.
“I wasn’t a-goin’ to say about this part,” he said frankly. “But you been straight with us, sir, and I see it ain’t right I let you go after that bear not knowin’ what else might be there.”
I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck, and resisted the sudden impulse to turn round and look into the shadows behind me. The urge to laugh had left me.
“What else?” Jamie slowly lowered the chunk of bread he had been about to bite into. “And just . . . what else might be there, then?”
“Well, ’twas only the once I saw for sure, mind,” Josiah warned him. “And ’twas a moonless night, too. But I’d been out all the night, and my eyes was well-accustomed to the starlight—you’ll know the way of it, sir.”
Jamie nodded, looking bemused.
“Aye, well enough. And ye were where, at the time?”
Near the village we were headed toward. Josiah had been there before, and was familiar with the layout of the place. A house at the end of the village was his goal; there were strings of corn hung to dry beneath the eaves, and he thought he could get away with one easily enough, provided he didn’t rouse the village dogs.
“Rouse one, ye’ve got ’em all a-yowling on your tail,” he said, shaking his head. “And it wasn’t but a couple of hours before the dawn. So I crept along slow-like, looking to see was one of the rascals curled up asleep by the house I had my eye on.” Lurking in the wood, he had seen a figure come out of the house. As no dogs took exception to this, it was a reasonable conclusion that the person belonged to the house. The man had paused to make water, and then, to Josiah’s alarm, had shouldered a bow and quiver, and marched directly toward the woods where he lay hidden.
“I didn’t think as he could be after me, but I went up a tree quick as a bob-tail cat, and not makin’ no more noise than one, neither,” he said, not bragging.
The man had most likely been a hunter, making an early start for a distant stream where raccoon and deer would come to drink at dawn. Not seeing any need of caution so near his own village, the man had not displayed any, walking