29

TO GRASP THE NETTLE

Scotland.” I sighed, thinking of the cool brown streams and dark pines of Lallybroch, Jamie’s estate. “Can we really go home?”

“I expect we’ll have to,” he answered wryly. “The King’s pardon says I leave France by mid-September, or I’m back in the Bastille. Presumably, His Majesty has arranged a pardon as well from the English Crown, so I willna be hanged directly I get off the ship in Inverness.”

“I suppose we could go to Rome, or to Germany,” I suggested, tentatively. I wanted nothing more than to go home to Lallybroch, and heal in the quiet peace of the Scottish Highlands. My heart sank at the thought of royal courts and intrigue, the constant press of danger and insecurity. But if Jamie felt we must…

He shook his head, red hair falling over his face as he stooped to pull on his stockings.

“Nay, it’s Scotland or the Bastille,” he said. “Our passage is already booked, just to make sure.” He straightened and brushed the hair out of his eyes with a wry smile. “I imagine the Duke of Sandringham—and possibly King George—want me safe at home, where they can keep an eye on me. Not spying in Rome, or raising money in Germany. The three weeks’ grace, I gather, is a courtesy to Jared, giving him time to come home before I leave.”

I was sitting in the window seat of my bedroom, looking out over the tumbled green sea of the Fontainebleau woods. The hot, languid air of summer seemed to press down, sapping all energy.

“I can’t say I’m not glad.” I sighed, pressing my cheek against the glass in search of a moment’s coolness. The legacy of yesterday’s chill rain was a blanketing humidity that made hair and clothes cling to my skin, itching and damp. “Do you think it’s safe, though? I mean, will Charles give up, now that the Comte is dead, and the money from Manzetti lost?”

Jamie frowned, rubbing his hand along the edge of his jaw to judge the growth of the stubble.

“I wish I knew whether he’d had a letter from Rome in the last two weeks,” he said, “and if so, what was in it. But aye, I think we’ve managed. No banker in Europe will advance anyone of the name of Stuart a brass centime, that’s for sure. Philip of Spain has other fish to fry, and Louis—” He shrugged, his mouth twisting wryly. “Between Monsieur Duverney and the Duke of Sandringham, I’d say Charles’s expectations in that direction are somewhat less than poor. Shall I shave, d’ye think?”

“Not on my account,” I said. The casual intimacy of the question made me suddenly shy. We had shared a bed the night before, but we had both been exhausted, and the delicate web woven between us in the arbor had seemed too fragile to support the stress of attempting to make love. I had spent the night in a terrible consciousness of his warm proximity, but thought I must, under the circumstances, leave the first move to him.

Now I caught the play of light across his shoulders as he turned to find his shirt, and was seized with the desire to touch him; to feel him, smooth and hard and eager against me once more.

His head popped through the neck of his shirt, and his eyes met mine, suddenly and unguarded. He paused for a moment, looking at me, but not speaking. The morning sounds of the château were clearly audible, outside the bubble of silence that surrounded us; the bustling of servants, the high thin sound of Louise’s voice, raised in some sort of altercation.

Not here, Jamie’s eyes said. Not in the midst of so many people.

He looked down, carefully fastening his shirt buttons. “Does Louise keep horses for riding?” he asked, eyes on his task. “There are some cliffs a few miles away; I thought perhaps we might ride there—the air may be cooler.”

“I think she does,” I said. “I’ll ask.”

We reached the cliffs just before noon. Not cliffs so much as jutting pillars and ridges of limestone that sat among the yellowing grass of the surrounding hills like the ruins of an ancient city. The pale ridges were split and fissured from time and weather, spattered with thousands of strange, tiny plants that had found a foothold in the merest scrape of eroded soil.

We left the horses hobbled in the grass, and climbed on foot to a wide, flat shelf of limestone covered with tufts of rough grass, just below the highest tumble of stone. There was little shade from the scruffy bushes, but up this high, there was a small breeze.

“God, it’s hot!” Jamie said. He flipped loose the buckle of his kilt, so it fell around his feet, and started to wriggle out of his shirt.

“What are you doing, Jamie?” I said, half-laughing.

“Stripping,” he replied, matter-of-factly. “Why don’t ye do the same, Sassenach? You’re more soaked than I am, and there’s none here to see.”

After a moment’s hesitation, I did as he suggested. It was entirely isolated here; too craggy and rocky for sheep, the chance of even a stray shepherd coming upon us was remote. And alone, naked together, away from Louise and her throngs of intrusive servants…Jamie spread his plaid on the rough ground as I peeled out of my sweat-clinging garments.

He stretched lazily and settled back, arms behind his head, completely oblivious to curious ants, stray bits of gravel and the stubs of prickly vegetation.

“You must have the hide of a goat,” I remarked. “How can you lie on the bare ground like that?” As bare as he, I reposed more comfortably on a thick fold of the plaid he had thoughtfully spread out for me.

He shrugged, eyes closed against the warm afternoon sun. The light gilded him in the hollow where he lay, making him glow red-gold against the dark of the rough grass beneath him.

“I’ll do,” he said comfortably, and lapsed into silence, the sound of his breathing near enough to reach me over the faint whine of the wind that crossed the ridges above us.

I rolled onto my belly and laid my chin on my crossed forearms, watching him. He was wide at the shoulder and narrow at the hip, with long, powerful haunches slightly dented by muscles held taut even as he relaxed. The small, warm breeze stirred the drying tufts of soft cinnamon hair beneath his arms, and ruffled the copper and gold that waved gently over his wrists, where they braced his head. The slight breeze was welcome, for the early autumn sun was still hot on my shoulders and calves.

“I love you,” I said softly, not meaning him to hear me, but only for the pleasure of saying it.

He did hear, though, for the hint of a smile curved the wide mouth. After a moment, he rolled over onto his belly on the plaid beside me. A few blades of grass clung to his back and buttocks. I brushed one lightly away, and his skin shivered briefly at my touch.

I leaned to kiss his shoulder, enjoying the warm scent of his skin and the faint salty taste of him.

Instead of kissing me back, though, he pulled away a bit, and lay propped on one elbow, looking at me. There was something in his expression that I didn’t understand, and it made me faintly uneasy.

“Penny for your thoughts,” I said, running a finger down the deep groove of his backbone. He moved just far enough to avoid my touch, and took a deep breath.

“Well, I was wondering—” he began, and then stopped. He was looking down, fiddling with a tiny flower that sprang out of the grass.

“You were wondering what?”

“What it was like…with Louis.”

I thought my heart had stopped for a moment. I knew all the blood had left my face, because I could feel the numbness of my lips as I forced the words out.

“What…it…was like?”

He looked up then, making only a passing-fair attempt at a lopsided smile.

“Well,” he said. “He is a king. You’d think it would be…different, somehow. You know…special, maybe?”

The smile was slipping, and his face had gone as white as my own. He looked down again, avoiding my stricken gaze.

“I suppose all I was wondering,” he murmured, “was…was he…was he different from me?” I saw him bite his lip as though wishing the words unsaid, but it was far too late for that.

“How in hell did you know?” I said. I felt dizzy and exposed, and rolled onto my stomach, pressing myself hard to the short turf.

He shook his head, teeth still clenched in his lower lip. When he finally released it, a deep red mark showed where he had bitten it.

“Claire,” he said softly. “Oh, Claire. You gave me all yourself from the first time, and held nothing back from me. You never did. When I asked ye for honesty, I told ye then that it isna in you to lie. When I touched ye so—” His hand moved, cupping my buttock, and I flinched, not expecting it.

“How long have I loved you?” he asked, very quietly. “A year? Since the moment I saw you. And loved your body how often—half a thousand times or more?” One finger touched me then, gently as a moth’s foot, tracing the line of arm and shoulder, gliding down my rib cage ’til I shivered at the touch and rolled away, facing him now.

“You never shrank from my touch,” he said, eyes intent on the path his finger took, dipping down to follow the curve of my breast. “Not even at the first, when ye might have done so, and no surprise to me if ye had. But you didn’t. You gave me everything from the very first time; held nothing back, denied me no part of you.”

“But now…” he said, drawing back his hand. “I thought at first it was only that you’d lost the child, and maybe were shy of me, or feeling strange after so long apart. But then I knew that wasn’t it.”

There was a very long silence, then. I could feel the steady, painful thudding of my heart against the cold ground, and hear the conversation of the wind in the pines down below. Small birds called, far away. I wished I were one. Or far away, at any rate.

“Why?” he asked softly. “Why lie to me? When I had come to you thinking I knew, anyway?”

I stared down at my hands, linked beneath my chin, and swallowed.

“If…” I began, and swallowed again. “If I told you that I had let Louis…you would have asked about it. I thought you couldn’t forget…maybe you could forgive me, but you’d never forget, and it would always be there between us.” I swallowed once more, hard. My hands were cold despite the heat, and I felt a ball of ice in my stomach. But if I was telling him the truth now, I must tell him all of it.

“If you’d asked—and you did, Jamie, you did! I would have had to talk about it, live it over, and I was afraid…” I trailed off, unable to speak, but he wasn’t going to let me off.

“Afraid of what?” he prodded.

I turned my head slightly, not meeting his eye, but enough to see his outline dark against the sun, looming through the sun-sparked curtain of my hair.

“Afraid I’d tell you why I did it,” I said softly. “Jamie…I had to, to get you freed from the Bastille—I would have done worse, if I’d had to. But then…and afterward…I half-hoped someone would tell you, that you’d find out. I was so angry, Jamie—for the duel, and the baby. And because you’d forced me to do it…to go to Louis. I wanted to do something to drive you away, to make sure I never saw you again. I did it…partly…because I wanted to hurt you,” I whispered.

A muscle contracted near the corner of his mouth, but he went on staring downward at his clasped hands. The chasm between us, so perilously bridged, gaped yawning and impassable once more.

“Aye. Well, you did.”

His mouth clamped shut in a tight line, and he didn’t speak for some time. Finally he turned his head and looked directly at me. I would have liked to avoid his eyes, but couldn’t.

“Claire,” he said softly. “What did ye feel—when I gave my body to Jack Randall? When I let him take me, at Wentworth?”

A tiny shock ran through me, from scalp to toenails. It was the last question I had expected to hear. I opened and closed my mouth several times before finding an answer.

“I…don’t know,” I said weakly. “I hadn’t thought. Angry, of course. I was furious—outraged. And sick. And frightened for you. And…sorry for you.”

“Were ye jealous? When I told you about it later—that he’d roused me, though I didna want it?”

I drew a deep breath, feeling the grass tickle my breasts.

“No. At least I don’t think so; I didn’t think so then. After all, it wasn’t as though you’d…wanted to do it.” I bit my lip, looking down. His voice was quiet and matter-of-fact at my shoulder.

“I dinna think you wanted to bed Louis—did you?”

“No!”

“Aye, well,” he said. He put his thumbs together on either side of a blade of grass, and concentrated on pulling it up slowly by the roots. “I was angry, too. And sick and sorry.” The grass blade came free of its sheath with a tiny squeaking sound.

“When it was me,” he went on, almost whispering, “I thought you could not bear the thought of it, and I would not have blamed you. I knew ye must turn from me, and I tried to send you away, so I wouldna have to see the disgust and the hurt in your face.” He closed his eyes and raised the grass blade between his thumbs, barely brushing his lips.

“But you wouldna go. You took me to your breast and cherished me. You healed me, instead. You loved me, in spite of it.” He took a deep, unsteady breath and turned his head to me again. His eyes were bright with tears, but no wetness escaped to slide down his cheeks.

“I thought, maybe, that I could bring myself to do that for you, as you did it for me. And that is why I came to Fontainebleau, at last.”

He blinked once, hard, and his eyes cleared.

“Then when ye told me that nothing had happened—for a bit, I believed you, because I wanted to so much. But then…I could tell, Claire. I couldna hide it from myself, and I knew you had lied to me. I thought you wouldna trust me to love you, or…that you had wanted him, and were afraid to let me see it.”

He dropped the grass, and his head sank forward to rest on his knuckles.

“Ye said you wanted to hurt me. Well, the thought of you lying with the King hurt worse than the brand on my breast, or the cut of the lash on my naked back. But the knowledge that ye thought ye couldna trust me to love you is like waking from the hangman’s noose to feel the gutting knife sunk in my belly. Claire—” His mouth opened soundlessly, then closed tight for a moment, until he found the strength to go on.

“I do not know if the wound is mortal, but Claire—I do feel my heart’s blood leave me, when I look at you.”

The silence between us grew and deepened. The small buzz of an insect calling in the rocks vibrated in the air.

Jamie was still as a rock, his face blank as he stared down at the ground below him. I couldn’t bear that blank face, and the thought of what must lie concealed behind it. I had seen a hint of his despairing fury in the arbor, and my heart felt hollow at the thought of that rage, mastered at such fearful cost, now held under an iron control that kept in not only rage, but trust and joy.

I wished desperately for some way to break the silence that parted us; some act that could restore the lost truth between us. Jamie sat up then, arms folded tight about his thighs, and turned away as he gazed out over the peaceful valley.

Better violence, I thought, than silence. I reached across the chasm between us and laid a hand on his arm. It was warm from the sun, live to my touch.

“Jamie,” I whispered. “Please.”

His head turned slowly toward me. His face seemed still calm, though the cat-eyes narrowed further as he looked at me in silence. He reached out, finally, and one hand gripped me by the wrist.

“Do ye wish me to beat you, then?” he said softly. His grasp tightened hard, so that I jerked unconsciously, trying to pull away from him. He pulled back, yanking me across the rough grass, bringing my body against him.

I felt myself trembling, and gooseflesh lifted the hairs on my forearms, but I managed to speak.

“Yes,” I said.

His expression was unfathomable. Still holding my eyes with his own, he reached out his free hand, fumbling over the rocks until he touched a bunch of nettles. He drew in his breath as his fingers touched the prickly stems, but his jaw clenched; he closed his fist and ripped the plants up by the roots.

“The peasants of Gascony beat a faithless wife wi’ nettles,” he said. He lowered the spiky bunch of leaves and brushed the flower heads lightly across one breast. I gasped from the sudden sting, and a faint red blotch appeared as though by magic on my skin.

“Will ye have me do so?” he asked. “Shall I punish you that way?”

“If you…if you like.” My lips were trembling so hard I could barely get out the words. A few crumbs of earth from the nettles’ roots had fallen between my breasts; one rolled down the slope of my ribs, dislodged by my pounding heart, I imagined. The welt on my breast burned like fire. I closed my eyes, imagining in vivid detail exactly what being thrashed with a bunch of nettles would feel like.

Suddenly the viselike grip on my wrist relaxed. I opened my eyes to find Jamie sitting cross-legged by me, the plants thrown aside and scattered on the ground. He had a faint, rueful smile on his lips.

“I beat you once in justice, Sassenach, and ye threatened to disembowel me with my own dirk. Now you’ll ask me to whip ye wi’ nettles?” He shook his head slowly, wondering, and his hand reached as though by its own volition to cup my cheek. “Is my pride worth so much to you, then?”

“Yes! Yes, it bloody is!” I sat up myself, and grasped him by the shoulders, taking both of us by surprise as I kissed him hard and awkwardly.

I felt his first involuntary start, and then he pulled me to him, arm tight around my back, mouth answering mine. Then he had me pressed flat to the earth, his weight holding me immobile beneath him. His shoulders darkened the bright sky above, and his hands held my arms against my sides, keeping me prisoner.

“All right,” he whispered. His eyes bored into mine, daring me to close them, forcing me to hold his gaze. “All right. And ye wish it, I shall punish you.” He moved his hips against me in imperious command, and I felt my legs open for him, my gates thrown wide to welcome ravishment.

“Never,” he whispered to me. “Never. Never another but me! Look at me! Tell me! Look at me, Claire!” He moved in me, strongly, and I moaned and would have turned my head, but he held my face between his hands, forcing me to meet his eyes, to see his wide, sweet mouth, twisted in pain.

“Never,” he said, more softly. “For you are mine. My wife, my heart, my soul.” The weight of him held me still, like a boulder on my chest, but the friction of our flesh made me thrust against him, wanting more. And more.

“My body,” he said, gasping for breath as he gave me what I sought. I bucked beneath him as though I wanted to escape, my back arching like a bow, pressing me into him. He lay then at full length on me, scarcely moving, so that our most intimate connection seemed barely closer than the marriage of our skins.

The grass was harsh and prickly under me, the pungence of crushed stems sharp as the smell of the man who took me. My breasts were flattened under him, and I felt the small tickle of the hairs on his chest as we rubbed together, back and forth. I squirmed, urging him to violence, feeling the swell of his thighs as he pressed me down.

“Never,” he whispered to me, face only inches from mine.

“Never,” I said, and turned my head, closing my eyes to escape the intensity of his gaze.

A gentle, inexorable pressure turned me back to face him, as the small, rhythmic movements went on.

“No, my Sassenach,” he said softly. “Open your eyes. Look at me. For that is your punishment, as it is mine. See what you have done to me, as I know what I have done to you. Look at me.”

And I looked, held prisoner, bound to him. Looked, as he dropped the last of his masks, and showed me the depths of himself, and the wounds of his soul. I would have wept for his hurt, and for mine, had I been able. But his eyes held mine, tearless and open, boundless as the salt sea. His body held mine captive, driving me before his strength, like the west wind in the sails of a bark.

And I voyaged into him, as he into me, so that when the last small storms of love began to shake me, he cried out, and we rode the waves together as one flesh, and saw ourselves in each other’s eyes.

The afternoon sun was hot on the white limestone rocks, casting deep shadows into the clefts and hollows. I found what I was looking for at last, growing from a narrow crack in a giant boulder, in gay defiance of the lack of soil. I broke a stalk of aloe from its clump, split the fleshy leaf, and spread the cool green gel inside across the welts on Jamie’s palm.

“Better?” I said.

“Much.” Jamie flexed his hand, grimacing. “Christ, those nettles sting!”

“They do.” I pulled down the neck of my bodice and spread a little aloe juice on my breast with a gingerly touch. The coolness brought relief at once.

“I’m rather glad you didn’t take me up on my offer,” I said wryly, with a glance at a nearby bunch of blooming nettle.

He grinned and patted me on the bottom with his good hand.

“Well, it was a near thing, Sassenach. Ye shouldna tempt me like that.” Then, sobering, he bent and kissed me gently.

“No, mo duinne. I swore to ye the once, and I was meaning it. I shallna raise a hand to you in anger, ever. After all,” he added softly, turning away, “I have done enough to hurt you.”

I shrank from the pain of memory, but I owed him justice as well.

“Jamie,” I said, lips trembling a bit. “The…baby. It wasn’t your fault. I felt as though it was, but it wasn’t. I think…I think it would have happened anyway, whether you’d fought Jack Randall or not.”

“Aye? Ah…well.” His arm was warm and comforting about me, and he pressed my head into the curve of his shoulder. “It eases me a bit to hear ye say so. It wasna the child so much as Frank that I meant, though. D’ye think you can forgive me for that?” The blue eyes were troubled as he looked down at me.

“Frank?” I felt a shock of surprise. “But…there’s nothing to forgive.” Then a thought struck me; perhaps he really didn’t know that Jack Randall was still alive—after all, he had been arrested immediately after the duel. But if he didn’t know.…I took a deep breath. He would have to find it out in any case; perhaps better from me.

“You didn’t kill Jack Randall, Jamie,” I said.

To my puzzlement, he didn’t seem shocked or surprised. He shook his head, the afternoon sun striking sparks from his hair. Not yet long enough to lace back again, it had grown considerably in prison, and he had to brush it out of his eyes continuously.

“I know that, Sassenach,” he said.

“You do? But…what…” I was at a loss.

“You…dinna know about it?” he said hesitantly.

A cold feeling crept up my arms, despite the heat of the sun.

“Know what?”

He chewed his lower lip, eyeing me reluctantly. At last he took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.

“No, I didna kill him. But I wounded him.”

“Yes, Louise said you wounded him badly. But she said he was recovering.” Suddenly, I saw again in memory that last scene in the Bois de Boulogne; the last thing I had seen before the blackness took me. The sharp tip of Jamie’s sword, slicing through the rain-spattered doeskin. The sudden red stain that darkened the fabric…and the angle of the blade, glinting with the force that drove it downward.

“Jamie!” I said, eyes widening with horror. “You didn’t…Jamie, what have you done!”

He looked down, rubbing his welted palm against the side of his kilt. He shook his head, wondering at himself.

“I was such a fool, Sassenach. I couldna think myself a man and let him go unpunished for what he’d done to the wee lad, and yet…all the time, I kept thinking to myself, ‘Ye canna kill the bastard outright, you’ve promised. Ye canna kill him.’ ” He smiled faintly, without humor, looking down at the marks on his palm.

“My mind was boiling over like a pot of parritch on the flame, yet I held to that thought. ‘Ye canna kill him.’ And I didn’t. But I was half-mad wi’ the fury of the fighting, and the blood singing in my ears—and I didna stop a moment to remember why it was I must not kill him, beyond that I had promised you. And when I had him there on the ground before me, and the memory of Wentworth and Fergus, and the blade live in my hand—” He broke off suddenly.

I felt the blood draining from my head and sat down heavily on a rock outcropping.

“Jamie,” I said. He shrugged helplessly.

“Well, Sassenach,” he said, still avoiding my gaze, “all I can say is, it’s a hell of a place to be wounded.”

“Jesus.” I sat still, stunned by this revelation. Jamie sat quiet beside me, studying the broad backs of his hands. There was still a small pink mark on the back of the right one. Jack Randall had driven a nail through it, in Wentworth.

“D’ye hate me for it, Claire?” His voice was soft, almost tentative.

I shook my head, eyes closed.

“No.” I opened them, and saw his face close by, wearing a troubled frown. “I don’t know what I think now, Jamie. I really don’t. But I don’t hate you.” I put a hand on his, and squeezed it gently. “Just…let me be by myself for a minute, all right?”

Clad once more in my now-dry gown, I spread my hands flat on my thighs. One silver, one gold. Both my wedding rings were still there, and I had no idea what that meant.

Jack Randall would never father a child. Jamie seemed sure of it, and I wasn’t inclined to question him. And yet I still wore Frank’s ring, I still remembered the man who had been my first husband, could summon at will thoughts and memories of who he had been, what he would do. How was it possible, then, that he would not exist?

I shook my head, thrusting back the wind-dried curls behind my ears. I didn’t know. Chances were, I never would know. But whether one could change the future or not—and it seemed we had—I was certain that I couldn’t change the immediate past. What had been done had been done, and nothing I could do now would alter it. Jack Randall would sire no children.

A stone rolled down the slope behind me, bouncing and setting off small slides of gravel. I turned and glanced up, to where Jamie, dressed once more, was exploring.

The rockfall above was recent. Fresh white surfaces showed where the stained brown of the weathered limestone had fractured, and only the smallest of plants had yet gained a foothold in this tumbled pile of rock, unlike the thick growth of shrubs that blanketed the rest of the hillside.

Jamie inched to one side, absorbed in finding handholds through the intricacies of the fall. I saw him edge around a giant boulder, hugging the rock, and the faint scrape of his dirk against the stone came to me through the still afternoon air.

Then he disappeared. Expecting him to reappear round the other side of the rock, I waited, enjoying the sun on my shoulders. But he didn’t come back into sight, and after a few moments, I grew worried. He might have slipped and fallen or banged his head on a rock.

I took what seemed forever to undo the fastenings of my heeled boots again, and still he had not come back. I rucked up my skirts, and started up the hill, bare toes cautious on the rough warm rocks.

“Jamie!”

“Here, Sassenach.” He spoke behind me, startling me, and I nearly lost my balance. He caught me by the arm and lifted me down to a small clear space between the jagged fallen stones.

He turned me toward the limestone wall, stained with water rust, and smoke. And something more.

“Look,” he said softly.

I looked where he pointed, up across the smooth expanse of the cave wall, and gasped at the sight.

Painted beasts galloped across the rock face above me, hooves spurning the air as they leaped toward the light above. There were bison, and deer, grouped together in tail-raised flight, and at the end of the rock shelf, a tracing of delicate birds, wings spread as they hovered above the charge of the earthbound beasts.

Done in red and black and ochre with a delicate grace that used the lines of the rock itself for emphasis, they thundered soundlessly, haunches rounded with effort, wings taking flight through the crevices of stone. They had lived once in the dark of a cave, lit only by the flames of those who made them. Exposed to the sun by the fall of their sheltering roof, they seemed alive as anything that walked upon the earth.

Lost in contemplation of the massive shoulders that thrust their way from the rock, I didn’t miss Jamie until he called me.

“Sassenach! Come here, will ye?” There was something odd about his voice, and I hurried toward him. He stood at the entrance of a small side-cave, looking down.

They lay behind an outcrop of the rock, as though they had sought shelter from the wind that chased the bison.

There were two of them, lying together on the packed earth of the cave floor. Sealed in the dry air of the cave, the bones had endured, though flesh had long since dried to dust. A tiny remnant of brown-parchment skin clung to the round curve of one skull, a strand of hair gone red with age stirring softly in the draft of our presence.

“My God,” I said, softly, as though I might disturb them. I moved closer to Jamie, and his hand slid around my waist.

“Do you think…were they…killed here? A sacrifice, perhaps?”

Jamie shook his head, staring pensively down at the small heap of delicate, friable bones.

“No,” he said. He, too, spoke softly, as though in the sanctuary of a church. He turned and lifted a hand to the wall behind us, where the deer leaped and the cranes soared into space beyond the stone.

“No,” he said again. “The folk that made such beasts…they couldna do such things.” He turned again then to the two skeletons, entwined at our feet. He crouched over them, tracing the line of the bones with a gentle finger, careful not to touch the ivory surface.

“See how they lie,” he said. “They didna fall here, and no one laid out their bodies. They lay down themselves.” His hand glided above the long armbones of the larger skeleton, a dark shadow fluttering like a large moth as it crossed the jackstraw pile of ribs.

“He had his arms around her,” he said. “He cupped his thighs behind her own, and held her tight to him, and his head is resting on her shoulder.”

His hand made passes over the bones, illuminating, indicating, clothing them once more with the flesh of imagination, so I could see them as they had been, embraced for the last time, for always. The small bones of the fingers had fallen apart, but a vestige of gristle still joined the metacarpals of the hands. The tiny phalanges overlay each other; they had linked hands in their last waiting.

Jamie had risen and was surveying the interior of the cavern, the late afternoon sun painting the walls with splashes of crimson and ochre.

“There.” He pointed to a spot near the cavern entrance. The rocks there were brown with dust and age, but not rusty with water and erosion, like those deeper in the cave.

“That was the entrance, once,” he said. “The rocks fell once before, and sealed this place.” He turned back and rested a hand on the rocky outcrop that shielded the lovers from the light.

“They must have felt their way around the cave, hand in hand,” I said. “Looking for a way out, in the dust and the dark.”

“Aye.” He rested his forehead against the stone, eyes closed. “And the light was gone, and the air failed them. And so they lay down in the dark to die.” The tears made wet tracks through the dust on his cheeks. I brushed a hand beneath my own eyes, and took his free hand, carefully weaving my fingers with his.

He turned to me, wordless, and the breath rushed from him as he pulled me hard against him. Our hands groped in the dying light of the setting sun, urgent in the touch of warmth, the reassurance of flesh, reminded by the hardness of the invisible bone beneath the skin, how short life is.