“Mrs. MacDonald’s mother says you’re a witch,” she replied. “Mrs. MacDonald tried to make her stop, when she saw I was listening, but the old lady doesn’t stop talking about anything, ever, except when she’s eating.”
I’d met Janet MacDonald’s mother, Grannie Campbell, once or twice, and was not overly surprised to hear this.
“I don’t suppose she’s the only one,” I said, a little tersely. “But I’m suggesting that perhaps you should be careful about what you say to people outside the family about your life in Philadelphia.”
She nodded, accepting what I’d said.
“It doesn’t matter that Grannie Campbell says you’re a witch,” she said thoughtfully. “Because Mr. MacDonald is afraid of Mr. Fraser. He tried to make Grannie stop talking about you,” she added, and shrugged. “Anyway, nobody’s afraid of me.”
Give them time, child, I thought, eyeing her.
“I wouldn’t say that people are afraid of Mr. Fraser, really—but they do respect him,” I said carefully.
She ducked her head a little, indicating that she knew better but wasn’t going to argue with me.
“Sometimes,” she said, “one of the girls would find a protector. Once in a very long while, he would even marry her”—she sighed briefly at the thought—“but usually he just would make sure that she had good food and nice clothes, and nobody would hurt her or use her badly.”
I didn’t know quite where this was going, but tilted my head inquiringly.
“When my sister met William again near Philadelphia, he th-said that he would take her and me both under his protection. She was so happy.” Her small, clear voice was suddenly thick with tears. “If—if we could have stayed wif him …”
Jamie had told me exactly what had happened to Fanny’s sister, Jane—and had done so in the bare minimum of words, his terseness betraying just how deeply it had shocked him, and how deeply it had wounded both him and William. I got up and knelt down by Fanny, gathering her into my arms. She wept almost silently, in the way of a child hiding grief or pain for fear of attracting punishment, and I held her tight, my own eyes stinging with tears.
“Fanny,” I whispered at last. “You’re safe. We won’t let anything happen to you, ever again.”
She hiccuped and shuddered briefly, but didn’t cling to me. She didn’t move away, either; just sat on her stool, quiet and fragile as a wounded bird, her feathers fluffed to keep what life she still had.
“William,” she said, so low I could hardly hear her. “He asked Mr. Fraser to look after me. But … Mr. Fraser doesn’t have to. I’m not weally under hith protection.”
“You are, Fanny,” I said, into the limp linen smell of her cap, and patted her gently. “William gave you to him, and—”
“And now he’s angwy with Will-iam.” She pulled away, knuckling the tears from her eyes.
“Oh, dear God. You mean you’re afraid that we’d put you out, because Mr. Fraser has a—um—difference of opinion with William? No. No, really, Fanny. Believe me, that won’t happen.”
She gave me a doubtful look, but nodded dutifully. Clearly she didn’t believe me.
“Mr. Fraser is a man of his word.”
She looked at me for a long moment, a frown puckering the soft skin between her brows. Then she stood up abruptly, wiped her sleeve under her nose, and curtsied to me. “I won’t talk to anybody,” she said. “About anything.”
36
What Lies Unseen
I HAD MADE UP my mind what to do about Denny within moments of shouting “pigheaded Scot!” at Jamie, but the ensuing conversation with Fanny had momentarily driven the matter out of my mind, and what with one thing and another, it was late the next afternoon before I managed to find Brianna alone.
Sean McHugh and his two biggest lads had come in the morning—with their hammers—to help with the roofing of the kitchen and the framing of the third story; Jamie and Roger had been up there with them, and the effect of five large men armed with hammers was much like that of a platoon of overweight woodpeckers marching in close formation overhead. They’d been at it all morning—causing everyone else to flee the house—but had broken for a late lunch down by the creek, and I’d seen Bree go back inside with Mandy.
I found her in my rudimentary surgery, sitting in the late sun that fell through the big window, the largest window in the New House. There was no glass in it yet—there might not be glass before spring, if then—but the flood of unobstructed afternoon light was glorious, glowing from the new yellow-pine boards of the floor, the soft butternut of Bree’s homespun skirt, and the fiery nimbus of her hair, half-bound in a long, loose plait.
She was drawing, and watching her absorbed in the paper pinned to her lap desk, I felt a deep envy of her gift—not for the first time. I would have given a lot to be able to capture what I saw now, Brianna, bronze and fire in the deep clear light, head bent as she watched Mandy on the floor, chanting to herself as she built an edifice of wooden blocks and the small, heavy glass bottles I used for tinctures and dried herbs.
“What are you thinking, Mama?”
“What did you say?” I looked up at Bree, blinking, and her mouth curled up.
“I said,” she repeated patiently, “what are you thinking? You have that look.”
“Which look is that?” I asked warily. It was an article of faith amongst the members of my family that I couldn’t keep secrets; that everything I thought was visible on my face. They weren’t entirely right, but they weren’t completely wrong, either. What never occurred to them was just how transparent they were to me.
Brianna tilted her head to one side, eyes narrowed as she examined my face. I smiled pleasantly, putting out a hand to intercept Mandy as she trotted past me, three medicine bottles in hand.
“You can’t take Grannie’s bottles outside, sweetheart,” I said, removing them deftly from her chubby grasp. “Grannie needs them to put medicine in.”
“But I’m gonna catch leeches wif Jemmy and Aidan and Germain!”
“You couldn’t get even one leech into a bottle that size,” I said, standing up and placing the bottles on a shelf out of reach. I scanned the next shelf down and found a slightly chipped pottery bowl with a lid.
“Here, take this.” I wrapped a small linen towel around the bowl and tucked it into the pocket of her pinafore. “Be sure to put in a little mud—a little mud, all right? No more than a pinch—and some of the waterweed you find the leeches in. That will keep them happy.”
I watched her trot out the door, black curls bouncing, then braced myself and turned back to Bree.
“Well, if you must know, I was thinking how much I should tell you.”
She laughed, though with sympathy.
“That’s the look, all right. You always look like a heron staring into the water when you have something you can’t quite decide whether to tell somebody.”
“A heron?”
“Beady-eyed and intent,” she explained. “A contemplative killer. I’ll draw you doing it one of these days, so you can see.”