Chapter 7: Three Graves

"That is my name on a gravestone," I said.

"It is a stone I have had for a hundred years," said Niall.

"I cut the letters tonight, an hour before you woke."

"Why would you do that?"

"To be fair."

"You were going to be buried here someday."

"I did not think you should lie under a blank one."

I looked at him.

He stood with the dead flowers in his hand and the first stars above his silver hair, perfectly serious.

"You are the most ridiculous man I have ever met," I said.

"I have been told."

"Who by?"

"My wives."

That stopped me.

He nodded at the three older stones.

They leaned together under the rowan tree, grey and soft with moss.

"Three," he said.

"The first in 1739, the second in 1801, the third in 1856."

"They knew what I was, every one."

"They lived on lamp-light and hot soup and a husband who slept all day."

"They never gave me their blood, and I never asked."

"I kept to deer."

"They grew old, and I buried them."

"The last one?"

"Three winters ago," he said.

"Fifty-four."

"She told me to stop standing in the road in the storms."

His voice cracked on the last word.

I did not know what to say, so I took the flowers out of his hand and laid them on the third grave.

"She sounds like she had sense," I said.

"She did."

"Then why are you standing in the road?"

He was silent for a while.

The loch lapped against the rock below us, and an owl began somewhere in the chapel ruins.

"In 1788 I was an old woman's neighbour," he said at last.

"She had the sight, as you do."

"She was your kin, I think, a great-great-aunt of your mother's mother."

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