Young Willie hefted one of the lanterns the men had removed from the coach and set off down the path into the trees with Lord Buchan trailing close behind him. Uncle Andrew followed next, carrying the second lantern, while Trevor and I brought up the rear. The dirt of the trail was soft from the recent rain, but the temperature had also cooled considerably in the past few days, hardening the earth just enough so that it wasn’t a muddy mess as the drive had been. Even so, I was forced to take care where I stepped, and to heft the skirts of my gown and chocolate brown cloak to keep them from trailing in the muck.
I was grateful for the fur trim of my hood surrounding my face, for it kept the chill from my head, but unfortunately, it also obstructed my view. I could see little more than straight in front of me, but the sounds of the nighttime were all around. Every pop of a twig or creak of the barren branches made me glance about to locate the source of what I had heard. The low rush in the distance I knew to be the river, but the scratching and clattering and creaking in the gloom of the forest surrounding me I could not always immediately name. I was reminded of a Scottish proverb I’d often heard quoted: The day has eyes, the night has ears.
Suddenly, in a break through the trees, I could see the moonlight illuminating the gable of the south transept with its large five-light window, now empty of all glass. Little else remained of the Dryburgh Abbey church, but for a fragment of the choir and the north transept, and the reddish-brown sandstone bases of the pillars that once held aloft the soaring roof of the church.
When the eleventh Earl of Buchan, the current earl’s uncle, acquired the monastic ruins forty years earlier, it was little more than an overgrown wreck, true to the name of ruins. The earl set about preserving what was left, adding a large formal garden within and around the stones. The effect was charming and romantic, but my father had noted that Buchan, who had been an eccentric antiquarian, also couldn’t resist adding a few “improvements,” namely an inscription and an obelisk south of the abbey. His nephew, the current earl, seemed much more practical, but as we approached the ruins, I could tell he was at least maintaining the abbey grounds.
I had been rather fond of the Gothic pile of Dryburgh Abbey, and its air of peace and tranquility, of nature merged with the fallen creation of man. But at night, with only the faint gleam of our lanterns to light the way, and the moon casting strange shadows across the faces of the crumbling ruins, I felt less assured.
We skirted the edge of the abbey cemetery, which we were divided from by a row of hedges and then the remnants of the abbey wall. It rose in jagged portions from waist-high to forty feet above our heads before it met up with the decorative rounded arches of the west door.
There, at the edge of the door, lay Dodd’s body propped against the stone frame. His head had fallen back to rest between the small niche created by two of the arches, exposing his neck to the light of our lanterns. One hand trailed across the ground beside his body while the other sat cradled in his lap, as if he had tried until his final breath to stanch the blood flowing from the wound in his upper chest and the hand had dropped with his last gasp to where it lay. His eyes were blessedly closed.
“Poor Dodd,” Lord Buchan murmured, the first to break the tense stillness.
I glanced up at him, and then Willie, whose cheeks were streaked with silent tears. Biting back an answering surge of emotion, I moved closer to the body, determined to remain unaffected. My tears would do neither Dodd nor Willie any good, but my reluctantly accrued knowledge of anatomy just might.
“Bring that lantern closer,” I told Willie, hoping that by giving the young man a purpose, it would help him collect himself.
He sniffed loudly and shuffled closer, nearly treading on my skirts.
I pushed the hood of my cloak back and knelt carefully beside the body. The air was cool enough to mask most of the odors, but I still breathed shallowly through my mouth, as I’d learned in Sir Anthony’s surgeries. My finely tuned nose could still smell the old caretaker’s musty body odor and the metallic tang of blood. I pushed back the edge of Dodd’s coat to see that his coarse woolen shirt beneath was, as expected, soaked with blood. The hole torn into the right side of his chest was quite obviously the cause of the bleeding. I quickly scanned the rest of his torso and his limbs, but could see no other signs of injury.
“One gunshot to the chest,” I said, stating the obvious in case one of the gentlemen could not see.
I reached a hand around Dodd’s shoulder, trying to pull his body forward to see his back. Willie passed his lantern to one of the other men and leaned over to help me.
“No exit wound.”
Willie and I gently rested Dodd’s body back against the stone arches. I surveyed the stone and the ground around the corpse and then made to rise. Trevor’s hand cupped my elbow, assisting me to my feet. Pressing my now blood-smeared fingertips together, lest I unwittingly touch anything, I turned to thank him, and then wished I hadn’t. The tight line of my brother’s mouth and the stark look in his eyes told me just how little he appreciated seeing this side of me.
I inhaled quickly and stepped away, returning to the task at hand.