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echoing faintly off the
hillside. Every branch and bare rock stood intensely clear in the brilliant dawn
light.
    In the garden, he had to look hard for what was left among the weeds. Five
red peppers, a cylindrical green courgette—profoundly rabbit-nibbled on one end;
some broad white beans, two fistfuls of wild rosemary and another of thyme, and
of course the garlic, which was his sole agricultural success. He could throw it
all in the pot with barley for soup. If she wouldn't eat it, he certainly would.
And he'd mash olives and capers into a
tapenade
to spread on his bread.
On his way back he collected pine kernels, eating them and tossing the cone
husks over the cliff as he went.
    After he started the soup, he looked in on her again. She was restless and
petulant, drifting from sense to nonsense, taking one sip of water and then
refusing the next. Her forehead and hands felt fiery. He might have thought she
was reaching a crisis, except the past days had seemed nothing but one endless
climax of fever and weakness.
    He did what he could for her, bathed her in a decoction of rue and rosemary
he'd been boiling daily, ever since she'd had a moment of lucidity and told him
to rub himself with it to prevent infection. She seemed to be something of an
expert in the matter of physicking, and when he could coax an instruction out of
her, he followed it with alacrity. Afterward, he took a half hour, as he had
daily, to climb carefully down into the canyon and steel himself to bathe in the
icy river that rushed down from mountains.
    To strengthen himself, she'd said—and God knew it took backbone to wade in
naked and pour a bucketful of frigid water over his head. He'd never been known
as a coward, but that little task bordered on being more than he could brave.
    He did it, though. Mainly because he had no desire to die the way she was
dying.
    The sun had cleared the canyon wall by the time he retied his queue and
shivered into his shirt and waistcoat. He walked a little way downstream,
whistling for Nemo, looking for any signs, still clinging to the faint hope that
a female's presence might be keeping the wolf in hiding.
    He found nothing to reassure him. At last he took a different path up the
canyon, emerging onto the track from the village. He kept his eyes on the
ground, still looking for fresh signs.
    The sign he found wasn't a wolf's. On a limestone ledge above the path, the
scrambling marks of human footprints led him to a little crevice beneath a
juniper bush. In the shadow, a battered cloak bag lay indifferently concealed.
He pulled it out, turned it over, and flipped open the buckles, rifling the
contents with seasoned efficiency and no compunction.
    The elegantly lined interior held a crushed silk gown and matching slippers
embroidered in an intricate pattern of Prussian blue birds. Beneath that lay a
set of bone stays in brown twill and a few pieces of muslin worked in elaborate
needlepoint.
    He pulled out the clothing, spreading the carelessly wrinkled gown over a
bush to keep it clean of dust while he ransacked the rest of the satchel.
Underneath the layer of twill, there was a leather case that held a collection
of small vials and medicines in tiny glass jars, all neatly lettered with labels
such as, "Carminative Powder" and "Blistering Plaister," and "Lozenges of
Marshmallows."
    Stuffed inside a silver cup, wrapped in a handkerchief, he found a fine pearl
choker. A painted fan and a pair of gold shoe buckles in a satin-lined case
marked "Remember the Giver" lay at the bottom. He stuck his hand in an interior
pocket and jerked back, swearing, sucking the cut on his finger. Investigating
more carefully, he found a sterling letter opener engraved "LGS" and sharpened
to a lethal point, along with the stable file that had done it.
    There was nothing else but a purse full of small coins and a worn sketchbook
labelled, "Silvering, Northumberland, 1764 to 17—, by Leigh Gail