While Andrew Blair unfastened the shirt and placed the saucer and the bread and the salt on the breast, the man beside him stood staring fixedly on the frozen features of the corpse. The new laird had to speak to him twice before he heard.
“I am ready. And you, now? What is it you are muttering over against the lips of the dead?”
“It is giving him a message I am. There is no harm in that, sure?”
“Keep to your own folk, Macallum. You are from the West you say, and we are from the North. There can be no messages between you and a Blair of Strathmore, no messages for you to be giving.”
“He that lies here knows well the man to whom I am sending a message”—and at this response Andrew Blair scowled darkly. He would fain have sent the man about his business, but he feared he might get no other.
“It is thinking I am that you are not a Macallum at all. I know all of that name in Mull, Iona, Skye, and the near isles. What will the name of your naming be, and of your father, and of his place?”
Whether he really wanted an answer, or whether he sought only to divert the man from his procrastination, his question had a satisfactory result.
“Well, now, it’s ready I am, Anndra-mhic-Adam.”
With that, Andrew Blair stooped once more and from the claar brought a small jug of water. From this he filled the saucer.
“You know what to say and what to do, Macallum.”