He suddenly felt like he was wading through a bog carrying five sacks of flour, naked. He was out of his depth, which was pretty much how he continually felt at the moment.
Calder nudged him with an elbow.
“No,” Mungo said, “I don’t believe that. I just don’t want to see you hurt, like he said, and if I think you may be, I will act.”
Harriet started to cry as she came toward him. Mungo felt a moment of panic as she wrapped her arms around him and hugged. Flora and Cyn were next. He was soon being smothered by women.
“Has he gone pale?” Mavis asked.
“Looks like he’s about to cast up the entire contents of his stomach,” Mrs. Greedy added.
“Mungo has never been one for hugging,” Calder added.
“And suddenly you’re chatty, are you?” He glared at his brother.
Calder didn’t answer, but there was a small smile on his worn face.
“Now, you lot, head back to Crabbett Close,” he said, jabbing his finger at them rudely. “Go.”
They all smiled weakly, which fooled no one, and wandered off down the street, chanting, “We are daughters of this land. Give us voice, let us stand!”
He moved with Calder then, through the people, weaving and bobbing, until he reached the stables.
“Mungo,” the stable master greeted him as he always did. “Need the carriage?”
“Aye, I do, please, Burt.”
The man wandered off, and Calder spoke. “What if my daughter is never found, brother? How will we cope?”
He turned to face Calder and felt helpless in the face of such obvious grief even as he refused to believe Fenella wasn’t still breathing.
“She still lives,” he said, “and we will get her back. If she did not, Ellen would not have seen her.”
“You believe them, then?”
“Aye, because I hear the voices, but they are much, much more. I’ve seen it, Calder. Witnessed the miracles they can perform. Trust that they will find her.”
His brother ran a hand over his face, and his shoulders began to shake.
“You’ve taught her to be strong, Calder. She will be waiting for us to rescue her.”
Mungo had never seen his brother weep. But he did then, and it made his chest burn.
“Fenella is a credit to you, Calder. She’s sweet-natured, strong-willed, and far more intelligent than either of us. Do Ifear for her? Aye, greatly. But I believe with all my heart that she lives, as do the others.”
His brother sniffed and removed his hand. He focused his red eyes on Mungo as if he was a lifeline.
“Ellen saw her in a vision, and that tells me she lives,” he reiterated.
“After we argued that day, Mungo. The day you left… I know I said some things I should not have… but then so did you. I did not expect that you would simply walk out of my life.”
Horses snorted and stomped their hooves around them. Mungo heard the roll of the carriage wheels as Burt and the stable hand connected it to the horses, but his focus was on Calder.
“I told you that the house wasn’t big enough for us both to live in if you continued to throw around orders,” Mungo said, remembering the argument as if it were yesterday.
“I was a fool.”
“As was I, Calder,” he conceded. Because he could do that now that his brother was here before him, hurting. Years of pride and telling himself he was the one in the right now looked foolish.
