Voyager (87 page)

“Reverend Campbell!” I exclaimed.

He whirled about at being so addressed, then, recognizing me, bowed and removed his hat.

“Mistress Malcolm!” he said. “How most agreeable to see you again.” His eye fell on Mr. Willoughby, and he blinked, features hardening in a stare of disapproval.

“Er…this is Mr. Willoughby,” I introduced him. “He’s an…associate of my husband’s. Mr. Willoughby, the Reverend Archibald Campbell.”

“Indeed.” The Reverend Campbell normally looked quite austere, but contrived now to look as though he had breakfasted on barbed wire, and found it untasty.

“I thought that you were sailing from Edinburgh to the West Indies,” I said, in hopes of taking his gelid eye off the Chinaman. It worked; his gaze shifted to me, and thawed slightly.

“I thank you for your kind inquiries, Madame,” he said. “I still harbor such intentions. However, I had urgent business to transact first in France. I shall be departing from Edinburgh on Thursday week.”

“And how is your sister?” I asked. He glanced at Mr. Willoughby with dislike, then taking a step to one side so as to be out of the Chinaman’s direct sight, lowered his voice.

“She is somewhat improved, I thank you. The draughts you prescribed have been most helpful. She is much calmer, and sleeps quite regularly now. I must thank you again for your kind attentions.”

“That’s quite all right,” I said. “I hope the voyage will agree with her.” We parted with the usual expressions of good will, and Mr. Willoughby and I walked down the Rue du Nord, back toward Jared’s house.

“Reverend meaning most holy fella, not true?” Mr. Willoughby said, after a short silence. He had the usual Oriental difficulty in pronouncing the letter “r,” which made the word “Reverend” more than slightly picturesque, but I gathered his meaning well enough.

“True,” I said, glancing down at him curiously. He pursed his lips and pushed them in and out, then grunted in a distinctly amused manner.

“Not so holy, that Reverend fella,” he said.

“What makes you say so?”

He gave me a bright-eyed glance, full of shrewdness.

“I see him one time, Madame Jeanne’s. Not loud talking then. Very quiet then, Reverend fella.”

“Oh, really?” I turned to look back, but the Reverend’s tall figure had disappeared into the crowd.

“Stinking whores,” Mr. Willoughby amplified, making an extremely rude gesture in the vicinity of his crotch in illustration.

“Yes, I gathered,” I said. “Well, I suppose the flesh is weak now and then, even for Scottish Free Church ministers.”

At dinner that night, I mentioned seeing the Reverend, though without adding Mr. Willoughby’s remarks about the Reverend’s extracurricular activities.

“I ought to have asked him where in the West Indies he was going,” I said. “Not that he’s a particularly scintillating companion, but it might be useful to know someone there.”

Jared, who was consuming veal patties in a businesslike way, paused to swallow, then said, “Dinna trouble yourself about that, my dear. I’ve made up a list for you of useful acquaintances. I’ve written letters for ye to carry to several friends there, who will certainly lend ye assistance.”

He cut another sizable chunk of veal, wiped it through a puddle of wine sauce, and chewed it, while looking thoughtfully at Jamie.

Having evidently come to a decision of some kind, he swallowed, took a sip of wine, and said in a conversational voice, “We met on the level, Cousin.”

I stared at him in bewilderment, but Jamie, after a moment’s pause, replied, “And we parted on the square.”

Jared’s narrow face broke into a wide smile.

“Ah, that’s a help!” he said. “I wasna just sure, aye? but I thought it worth the trial. Where were ye made?”

“In prison,” Jamie replied briefly. “It will be the Inverness lodge, though.”

Jared nodded in satisfaction. “Aye, well enough. There are lodges on Jamaica and Barbados—I’ll have letters for ye to the Masters there. But the largest lodge is on Trinidad—better than two thousand members there. If ye should need great help in finding the lad, that’s where ye must ask. Word of everything that happens in the islands comes through that lodge, sooner or later.”

“Would you care to tell me what you’re talking about?” I interrupted.

Jamie glanced at me and smiled.

“Freemasons, Sassenach.”

“You’re a Mason?” I blurted. “You didn’t tell me that!”

“He’s not meant to,” Jared said, a bit sharply. “The rites of Freemasonry are secret, known only to the members. I wouldna have been able to give Jamie an introduction to the Trinidad lodge, had he not been one of us already.”

The conversation became general again, as Jamie and Jared fell to discussing the provisioning of the Artemis, but I was quiet, concentrating on my own veal. The incident, small as it was, had reminded me of all the things I didn’t know about Jamie. At one time, I should have said I knew him as well as one person can know another.

Now, there would be moments, talking intimately together, falling asleep in the curve of his shoulder, holding him close in the act of love, when I felt I knew him still, his mind and heart as clear to me as the lead crystal of the wineglasses on Jared’s table.

And others, like now, when I would stumble suddenly over some unsuspected bit of his past, or see him standing still, eyes shrouded with recollections I didn’t share. I felt suddenly unsure and alone, hesitating on the brink of the gap between us.

Jamie’s foot pressed against mine under the table, and he looked across at me with a smile hidden in his eyes. He raised his glass a little, in a silent toast, and I smiled back, feeling obscurely comforted. The gesture brought back a sudden memory of our wedding night, when we had sat beside each other sipping wine, strangers frightened of each other, with nothing between us but a marriage contract—and the promise of honesty.

There are things ye maybe canna tell me, he had said. I willna ask ye, or force ye. But when ye do tell me something, let it be the truth. There is nothing between us now but respect, and respect has room for secrets, I think—but not for lies.

I drank deeply from my own glass, feeling the strong bouquet of the wine billow up inside my head, and a warm flush heat my cheeks. Jamie’s eyes were still fixed on me, ignoring Jared’s soliloquy about ship’s biscuit and candles. His foot nudged mine in silent inquiry, and I pressed back in answer.

“Aye, I’ll see to it in the morning,” he said, in reply to a question from Jared. “But for now, Cousin, I think I shall retire. It’s been a long day.” He pushed back his chair, stood up, and held out his arm to me.

“Will ye join me, Claire?”

I stood up, the wine rushing through my limbs, making me feel warm all over and slightly giddy. Our eyes met with a perfect understanding. There was more than respect between us now, and room for all our secrets to be known, in good time.

In the morning, Jamie and Mr. Willoughby went with Jared, to complete their errands. I had another errand of my own—one that I preferred to do alone. Twenty years ago, there had been two people in Paris whom I cared for deeply. Master Raymond was gone; dead or disappeared. The chances that the other might still be living were slim, but still, I had to see, before I left Europe for what might be the last time. With my heart beating erratically, I stepped into Jared’s coach, and told the coachman to drive to the Hôpital des Anges.

The grave was set in the small cemetery reserved for the convent, under the buttresses of the nearby cathedral. Even though the air from the Seine was damp and cold, and the day cloudy, the walled cemetery held a soft light, reflected from the blocks of pale limestone that sheltered the small plot from wind. In the winter, there were no shrubs or flowers growing, but leafless aspens and larches spread a delicate tracery against the sky, and a deep green moss cradled the stones, thriving despite the cold.

It was a small stone, made of a soft white marble. A pair of cherub’s wings spread out across the top, sheltering the single word that was the stone’s only other decoration. “Faith,” it read.

I stood looking down at it until my vision blurred. I had brought a flower; a pink tulip—not the easiest thing to find in Paris in December, but Jared kept a conservatory. I knelt down and laid it on the stone, stroking the soft curve of the petal with a finger, as though it were a baby’s cheek.

“I thought I wouldn’t cry,” I said a little later.

I felt the weight of Mother Hildegarde’s hand on my head.

“Le Bon Dieu orders things as He thinks best,” she said softly. “But He seldom tells us why.”

I took a deep breath and wiped my cheeks with a corner of my cloak. “It was a long time ago, though.” I rose slowly to my feet and turned to find Mother Hildegarde watching me with an expression of deep sympathy and interest.

“I have noticed,” she said slowly, “that time does not really exist for mothers, with regard to their children. It does not matter greatly how old the child is—in the blink of an eye, the mother can see the child again as it was when it was born, when it learned to walk, as it was at any age—at any time, even when the child is fully grown and a parent itself.”

“Especially when they’re asleep,” I said, looking down again at the little white stone. “You can always see the baby then.”

“Ah.” Mother nodded, satisfied. “I thought you had had more children; you have the look, somehow.”

“One more.” I glanced at her. “And how do you know so much about mothers and children?”

The small black eyes shone shrewdly under heavy brow ridges whose sparse hairs had gone quite white.

“The old require very little sleep,” she said, with a deprecatory shrug. “I walk the wards at night, sometimes. The patients talk to me.”

She had shrunk somewhat with advancing age, and the wide shoulders were slightly bowed, thin as a wire hanger beneath the black serge of her habit. Even so, she was still taller than I, and towered over most of the nuns, more scarecrow-like, but imposing as ever. She carried a walking stick but strode erect, firm of tread and with the same piercing eye, using the stick more frequently to prod idlers or direct underlings than to lean on.

I blew my nose and we turned back along the path to the convent. As we walked slowly back, I noticed other small stones set here and there among the larger ones.

“Are those all children?” I asked, a little surprised.

“The children of the nuns,” she said matter-of-factly. I gaped at her in astonishment, and she shrugged, elegant and wry as always.

“It happens,” she said. She walked a few steps farther, then added, “Not often, of course.” She gestured with her stick around the confines of the cemetery.

“This place is reserved for the sisters, a few benefactors of the Hôpital—and those they love.”

“The sisters or the benefactors?”

“The sisters. Here, you lump!”

Mother Hildegarde paused in her progress, spotting an orderly leaning idly against the church wall, smoking a pipe. As she berated him in the elegantly vicious Court French of her girlhood, I stood back, looking around the tiny cemetery.

Against the far wall, but still in consecrated ground, was a row of small stone tablets, each with a single name, “Bouton.” Below each name was a Roman numeral, I through XV. Mother Hildegarde’s beloved dogs. I glanced at her current companion, the sixteenth holder of that name. This one was coal-black, and curly as a Persian lamb. He sat bolt upright at her feet, round eyes fixed on the delinquent orderly, a silent echo of Mother Hildegarde’s outspoken disapproval.

The sisters, and those they love.

Mother Hildegarde came back, her fierce expression altering at once to the smile that transformed her strong gargoyle features into beauty.

“I am so pleased that you have come again, ma chère,” she said. “Come inside; I shall find things that may be useful to you on your journey.” Tucking the stick in the crook of her arm, she instead took my forearm for support, grasping it with a warm bony hand whose skin had grown paperthin. I had the odd feeling that it was not I who supported her, but the other way around.

As we turned into the small yew alley that led to the entrance to the Hôpital, I glanced up at her.

“I hope you won’t think me rude, Mother,” I said hesitantly, “but there is one question I wanted to ask you…”

“Eighty-three,” she replied promptly. She grinned broadly, showing her long yellow horse’s teeth. “Everyone wants to know,” she said complacently. She looked back over her shoulder toward the tiny graveyard, and lifted one shoulder in a dismissive Gallic shrug.

“Not yet,” she said confidently. “Le Bon Dieu knows how much work there is still to do.”

It was a cold, gray day—there is no other kind in Scotland in December—when the Artemis touched at Cape Wrath, on the northwest coast.

I peered out of the tavern window into a solid gray murk that hid the cliffs along the shore. The place was depressingly reminiscent of the landscape near the silkies’ isle, with the smell of dead seaweed strong in the air, and the crashing of waves so loud as to inhibit conversation, even inside the small pothouse by the wharf. Young Ian had been taken nearly a month before. Now it was past Christmas, and here we were, still in Scotland, no more than a few miles from the seals’ island.

Jamie was striding up and down the dock outside, in spite of the cold rain, too restless to stay indoors by the fire. The sea journey from France back to Scotland had been no better for him than the first Channel crossing, and I knew the prospect of two or three months aboard the Artemis filled him with dread. At the same time, his impatience to be in pursuit of the kidnappers was so acute that any delay filled him with frustration. More than once I had awakened in the middle of the night to find him gone, walking the streets of Le Havre alone.

Ironically, this final delay was of his own making. We had touched at Cape Wrath to retrieve Fergus, and with him, the small group of smugglers whom Jamie had sent him to fetch, before leaving ourselves for Le Havre.

“There’s no telling what we shall find in the Indies, Sassenach,” Jamie had explained to me. “I dinna mean to go up against a shipload of pirates singlehanded, nor yet to fight wi’ men I dinna ken alongside me.” The smugglers were all men of the shore, accustomed to boats and the ocean, if not to ships; they would be hired on as part of the Artemis’s crew, shorthanded in consequence of the late season in which we sailed.