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to play this evening, perhaps in deference to my father’s death.
    I closed my eyes a moment, listening to the familiar bustle, the hum of her voice, and the sad, lilting notes of the harp, wishing myself back a boy again, at home here with my uncle and aunt, with no murders to solve or dead fathers to avenge.
    “Och, Muirteach,” laughed my aunt Euluasaid, as I opened my eyes and she handed me a bannock, “and are you as tired as all that? You will be spoiling those good looks of yours if you are not resting a bit.”
    For some reason I could not understand, my aunt believed me to be handsome, and often teased me on it. But I did realize, as I ate the bannock she had given me, that I was exhausted. The climb had wearied my leg, I’d had too much drink at Donald Dubh’s, and the last two days had been far from easy. I pushed the image of my father’s body away, however, and smiled at her a little as I ate.
    “Are you not thinking, Mariota, that he is well-favored, with that dark hair, and those gray eyes of his? Especially when he is smiling?” she continued. “He has a smile that could be charming the angels, does Muirteach, but we see it too seldom.” Well and truly embarrassed now, I was grateful that Mariota did not respond, and I prayed she had not heard my aunt, above the general noise in the hall.
    “Now, Mariota,” my aunt asked a moment or two later, “what would you be using for teething?” My newest cousin was proving somewhat colicky, and none of my aunt’s remedies so far had worked to help the bairn.
    I listened idly to Mariota describing to my aunt a concoction of uisgebeatha , fennel, and milk until Gillespic interrupted my thoughts.
    “You went to Sheena’s?” he asked.
    “Aye.”
    “And?”
    “She claimed to know nothing, but she had a fresh big bruise on her cheek. Angus and Alasdair claim they were away at Jura, and have a deer to prove it.”
    “Deer run on Colonsay,” said my uncle. “Wasn’t it Fergus who saw a large stag and some other deer just up north of the Bay last week?”
    “They say Rhodri and Malcolm were with them,” I continued, “but Rhodri and Malcolm are gone now, to Barra, for word came that Rhodri’s great-uncle was taken ill there, and they left this morning. Myself, I do not see how they could have been doing it, if Rhodri and Malcolm were with them, for I am thinking they have no reason to be killing the Prior whatever,” I concluded.
    “A great pity that is,” said Gillespic, and I looked at him, wondering what he meant by that—a pity that Angus and Alasdair might not be our killers, or a pity Rhodri and Malcolm had no reason to murder my father.
    “Still, there is the bruise on her cheek you said,” added the Beaton, who had been listening intently. “Is Sheena a big woman?”
    “Tall enough.”
    “Tall and strong enough to kill?
    I did not think so. And whyever would she do so now, at any rate, for my father had been beating her, it seemed, as long as he had known her. I said as much to my uncle and the Beaton. The meal ended, the harper stopped his music, and began to eat the food my aunt brought to him while the Beaton, Gillespic, Mariota and I went outside the Hall, into the courtyard.
    “Perhaps I had best be paying a visit to this Sheena,” said Mariota abruptly. I had thought she had not heard my conversation with her father and my uncle, but apparently the discussion of cures for the colic had not prevented her from hearing that, at least.
    “Whyever for?” I asked.
    “Are you not wanting to know how she got the bruises?”
    “Aye.”
    “And she was not telling you, was she? But she might tell another woman, and a healer at that.”
    “Were you not going back to Islay?” I said, starting to argue, but her father interrupted.
    “Muirteach, His Lordship himself was wanting me to help you a bit. And though I have inspected your father’s body, we were not going to be leaving for yet another day or so; your aunt is aye worried