“Local farmhands more like,” Rebus offered.

She nodded agreement. “All the same, they started leaving little offerings. Hence the name clootie.” She glanced around at him. “You’ll know what it means, you being the only native Scot around here?”

He had a sudden image of his mother lifting the pudding out of its pan. The pudding wrapped in…

“Cloth,” he told her.

“And clothing,” she added as they entered another clearing. They stopped and Rebus breathed deeply. Damp cloth…damp, rotting cloth. He’d been smelling it for the past half minute. The smell clothes gave off in his old house, the one he’d grown up in, when they weren’t aired, when the damp and the mildew got to them. The trees around him were strung with rags and remnants. Pieces had fallen to the ground, where they were decomposing to a mulch.

“Tradition has it,” Siobhan said quietly, “they were left here for good luck. Keep the sprites warm, and they’d see no harm came to you. Another theory: when kids died young, their parents left something here, by way of remembrance.” Her voice caught, and she cleared her throat.

“I’m not made of glass,” Rebus assured her. “You can use words like remembrance-I’m not going to start blubbing.”

She nodded again. Rebus was walking around the clearing. Leaves and soft moss underfoot, and the sound of a stream, just a thin trickle of water pushing up from the ground. Candles and coins had been left by its edges.

“Not much of a well,” he commented.

She just shrugged. “I was here a few minutes…didn’t really warm to the atmosphere. But then I noticed some of the newer clothing.” Rebus saw it too. Strung from the branches. A shawl, overalls, a red polka-dot handkerchief. A nearly new sneaker, its laces dangling. Even underwear and what looked like children’s stockings.