Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (39 page)

I told him, as simply as I could, and omitting the things Fanny had told me about the late Captain Harkness’s habits.

“Do you know the word ‘whore’—er…‘hoor,’ I mean?” I amended, and the frown of incomprehension relaxed.

“Sure. Germain told me. Hoors are ladies that go to bed with men they aren’t married to. Fanny’s not a hoor, though—was her sister?” He looked troubled at the thought.

“Well, yes,” I said. “Not to put too fine a point on it. But women—or girls—who become whores do it because they have no other way to earn a living. Not because they want to, I mean.”

He looked confused. “How do they earn money?”

“Oh. The men pay them to—er—go to bed with them. Take my word for it,” I assured him, seeing his eyes widen in astonishment.

“I go to bed with Mandy and Fanny all the time,” he protested. “And Germain, too. I wouldn’t pay them money for being girls!”

“Jeremiah,” I said, pouring fresh hot water into the pot. “ ‘Go to bed’ is a euphemism—do you know that word? It means saying something that sounds better than what you’re really talking about—for sexual intercourse.”

“Oh,
that,
” he said, his face clearing. “Like the pigs? Or the chickens?”

“Rather like that, yes. Find me a clean cloth, will you? There should be some in the lower cupboard.” I knelt, knees creaking slightly, and scooped the hot stone out of the ashes with the poker. It made a small hissing sound as the cold air of the surgery hit the hot surface.

“So,” I said, reaching for the cloth he’d fetched me, and trying for as matter-of-fact a voice as could be managed, “Jane and Fanny’s parents had died, and they had no way to feed themselves, so Jane became a whore. But some men are very wicked—I expect you know that already, don’t you?” I added, glancing up at him, and he nodded soberly.

“Yes. Well, a wicked man came to the place where Jane and Fanny lived and wanted to make Fanny go to bed with him, even though she was much too young to do such a thing. And…er…Jane killed him.”

“Wow.”

I blinked at him, but it had been said with the deepest respect. I coughed and began folding the cloth.

“It was very heroic of her, yes. But she—”

“How did she kill him?”

“With a knife,” I said, a little tersely, hoping he wouldn’t ask for details. I knew them and wished I didn’t. “But the man was a soldier, and when the British army found out, they arrested Jane.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Jem said, in tones of awed horror. “Did they hang her, like they tried to hang Dad?”

I tried to think whether I should tell him not to take the Lord’s name in vain, but on the one hand, he clearly hadn’t meant it that way—and for another, I was a blackened pot in that particular regard.

“They meant to. She was alone, and very much afraid—and she…well, she killed herself, darling.”

He looked at me for a long moment, face blank, then swallowed, hard.

“Did Jane go to Hell, Grannie?” he asked in a small voice. “Is that why Fanny’s so sad?”

I’d wrapped the stone thickly in cloth; the heat of it glowed in the palms of my hands.

“No, sweetheart,” I said, with as much conviction as I could muster. “I’m quite sure she didn’t. God would certainly understand the circumstances. No, Fanny’s just missing her sister.”

He nodded, very sober.

“I’d miss Mandy, if she killed somebody and got—” He gulped at the thought. I was somewhat concerned to note that the notion of Mandy killing someone apparently seemed reasonable to him, but then…

“I’m quite sure nothing like that would ever happen to Mandy. Here.” I gave him the wrapped stone. “Be careful with it.”

We made our way slowly upstairs, trailing warm ginger steam, and found Jamie sitting beside Fanny on the bed, a small collection of things laid out on the quilt between them. He looked up at me, flicked an eyebrow at Jem, and then nodded at the quilt.

“Frances was just showing me a picture of her sister. Would ye let Mrs. Fraser and Jem have a look,
a nighean
?”

Fanny’s face was still blotched from crying, but she had herself more or less back in hand, and she nodded soberly, moving aside a little.

The small bundle of possessions she had brought with her was unrolled, revealing a pathetic little pile of items: a nit comb, the cork from a wine bottle, two neatly folded hanks of thread, one with a needle stuck through it, a paper of pins, and a few small bits of tawdry jewelry. On the quilt was a sheet of paper, much folded and worn in the creases, with a pencil drawing of a girl.

“One of the men dwew—
drew
—it, one night in the salon,” Fanny said, moving aside a little, so we could look.

It was no more than a sketch, but the artist had caught a spark of life. Jane had been lovely in outline, straight-nosed and with a delicate, ripe mouth, but there was neither flirtation nor demureness in her expression. She was looking half over her shoulder, half smiling, but with an air of mild scorn in her look.

“She’s pretty, Fanny,” Jemmy said, and came to stand by her. He patted her arm as he would have patted a dog, and with as little self-consciousness.

Jamie had given Fanny a handkerchief, I saw; she sniffed and blew her nose, nodding.

“This is all I have,” she said, her voice hoarse as a young toad’s. “Just this and her wock—locket.”

“This?” Jamie stirred the little pile gently with a big forefinger and withdrew a small brass oval, dangling on a chain. “Is it a miniature of Jane, then, or maybe a lock of her hair?”

Fanny shook her head, taking the locket from him.

“No,” she said. “It’s a picture of our muv—mother.” She slid a thumbnail into the side of the locket and flicked it open. I bent forward to look, but the miniature inside was hard to see, shadowed as it was by Jamie’s body.

“May I?”

Fanny handed me the locket and I turned to hold it close to the candle. The woman inside had dark, softly curly hair like Fanny’s—and I thought I could make out a resemblance to Jane in the nose and set of the chin, though it wasn’t a particularly skillful rendering.

Behind me, I heard Jamie say, quite casually, “Frances, no man will ever take ye against your will, while I live.”

There was a startled silence, and I turned round to see Fanny staring up at him. He touched her hand, very gently.

“D’ye believe me, Frances?” he said quietly.

“Yes,” she whispered, after a long moment, and all the tension left her body in a sigh like the east wind.

Jemmy leaned against me, head pressing my elbow, and I realized that I was just standing there, my eyes full of tears. I blotted them hastily on my sleeve and pressed the locket closed. Or tried to; it slipped in my fingers and I saw that there was a name inscribed inside it, opposite the miniature.

Faith,
it said.

I COULDN’T GO
to sleep. I’d given Fanny her tea, provided her with suitable cloths—not at all to my surprise, she already knew how to use them—and talked gently to her, careful not to raise any more of her personal ghosts.

When Fanny had come to us, Jamie and I had agreed that we wouldn’t try to question her about any of the bits of memory she dropped aloud—like the bad men on the ship and what had happened to Spotty the dog—unless she seemed to want to talk about them. I thought she would, sooner or later. Bree and Roger had agreed as well, though I could see how curious Brianna was.

Fanny had mentioned Jane now and then, offhandedly, but in a way designed—I thought—to keep a sense of her sister alive. Seeing her distress tonight, though…Jane was much closer to her than I’d thought. And now that I’d seen Jane’s face…I couldn’t forget it.

Knowing only what I
did
know about the girls’ lives in the brothel in Philadelphia was upsetting; I really hadn’t wanted to find out how they’d come there. I still didn’t…but I couldn’t keep the worm of speculation at bay; it had burrowed into my brain and was squirming busily through my thoughts, killing sleep.

Bad men on a ship. A dog thrown into the sea. A pet dog? A family—if Fanny and Jane had been with their parents on a ship that encountered pirates…or even a wicked captain, like Stephen Bonnet…I felt the hairs rise on my forearms at thought of him, but with remembered anger, not fear. Someone like him could easily have taken a look at the two lovely young girls and decided that their parents could be dispensed with.

Faith.
Our mother,
Fanny had said. I’d looked more than once at the miniature in the locket—but it was too small to show anything more than a young woman with dark hair, maybe naturally curly, maybe curled and dressed in the fashion of the times.

No. It can’t be. I rolled over for the dozenth time, settling on my stomach and burying my face in the pillow, in hopes of losing myself in the scent of clean linen and goose down.

“It can’t be what, Sassenach?” Jamie’s voice spoke in my ear, sleepily resigned. “And if it can’t, can it not wait ’til dawn?”

I rolled onto my side in a rustle of bedding, facing him.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and touched him apologetically. His hand took mine automatically, warm and firm. “I didn’t realize I’d said it out loud. I was…just thinking about Fanny’s locket.”

Faith.

“Ach,” he said, and stretched himself a little, groaning. “Ye mean the name. Faith?”

“Well…yes. I mean—it can’t possibly…have anything to do with…”

“It’s no an uncommon name, Sassenach.” His thumb rubbed gently over my knuckles. “Of course ye’d…feel it. I did, too.”

“Did you?” I said softly. I cleared my throat a little. “I—I don’t really do it anymore, but for a time, just—just every now and then—I’d think of her, of our Faith—out of nowhere. I’d imagine I could feel her near me.”

“Imagine what she might look like—grown?” His voice was soft, too. “I did that, sometimes. In prison, mostly; too much time to think, in the nights. Alone.”

I made a small sound and hitched closer, laying my head in the curve of his shoulder, and his arm came round me. We lay still, silent, listening to the night and the house around us. Full of our family—but with one small angel hovering in the calm sweet air, peaceful as rising smoke.

“The locket,” I said at last. “It can’t possibly have anything whatever to do with—”

“No, it can’t,” he said, a cautious note in his voice. “But what are ye thinking, Sassenach? Because ye’re no thinking what ye just said, and I ken that fine.”

That was true, and a spasm of guilt at being found out tightened my body.

“It
can’t
be,” I said, and swallowed. “It’s only…” My words died away and his hand rubbed between my shoulder blades.

“Well, ye’d best tell me, Sassenach,” he said. “Nay matter how foolish it is, neither one of us will sleep until ye do.”

“Well…you know what Roger told me, about the doctor he met in the Highlands, and the blue light?”

“I do. What—”

“Roger asked me if I’d ever seen blue light like that—when I was healing people.”

The hand on my back stilled.

“Have ye?” He sounded guarded, though I didn’t know whether he was afraid of finding out something he didn’t want to know, or just finding out that I was losing my mind.

“No,” I said. “Or not—well, no. But…I have
seen
it. Felt it. Twice. Just a flash, when Malva’s baby died.”
Died in my hands, covered with his mother’s blood.
“But when Faith was born, when I was so ill. I was dying—really dying, I felt it—and Master Raymond came.”

“Ye told me that much,” he said. “Is there more?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But this is what I
thought
happened.” And I told him, about seeing my bones glow blue through the flesh of my arms, the feeling of the light spreading through my body and the infection dying, leaving me limp, but whole and healing.

“So…um…I
know
this is nothing but pure fantasy, the sort of thing you think in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep…”

He made a low noise, indicating that I should stop apologizing and get on with it. So I took a deep breath and did, whispering the words into his chest.

“Master Raymond was there. What if—if he found…Faith…and was able to…somehow bring her…back?”

Dead silence. I swallowed and went on.

“People…aren’t always dead, even though it looks like it. Look at old Mrs. Wilson! Every doctor knows—or has heard—about people who’ve been declared dead and wake up later in the morgue.”

“Or in a coffin.” He sounded grim, and a shudder went over me. “Aye, I’ve heard stories like that. But—a wee babe and one born too soon—how—”

“I don’t
know
how!” I burst out. “I
said
it’s complete fantasy, it can’t be true! But—but—” My throat thickened and my voice squeaked.

“But ye wish it were?” His hand cupped the back of my head and his voice was quiet again. “Aye. But…if it was,
mo chridhe,
why would he not have told ye? Ye saw him again, no? After he’d healed ye, I mean.”

“Yes.” I shuddered, momentarily feeling the King of France’s Star Chamber close around me, the smell of the King’s perfume, of dragon’s blood and wine in the air—and two men before me, awaiting my sentence of death.