“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 …”