The Space Between (Outlander, #7.5)(10)
She was dimly aware of Michael staring at her, curious. He said something to her, but she wasn’t listening, listening hard instead inside her head. Where were the damned voices when you bloody needed one?
But the voices were stubbornly silent, and she turned to Michael, the muscles of her arm jumping, she’d held so tight to the ship’s rigging.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasna listening properly. I just—thought of something.”
“If it’s a thing I can help ye with, Sister, ye’ve only to ask,” he said, smiling faintly. “Oh! And speak of that, I meant to say—I said to your mam, if she liked to write to you in care of Fraser et Cie, I’d see to it that ye got the letters.” He shrugged, one-shouldered. “I dinna ken what the rules are at the convent, aye? About getting letters from outside.”
Joan didn’t know that, either, and had worried about it. She was so relieved to hear this that a huge smile split her face.
“Oh, it’s that kind of ye!” she said. “And if I could—maybe write back …?”
His smile grew wider, the marks of grief easing in his pleasure at doing her a service.
“Anytime,” he assured her. “I’ll see to it. Perhaps I could—”
A ragged shriek cut through the air, and Joan glanced up, startled, thinking it one of the seabirds that had come out from shore to wheel round the ship, but it wasn’t. The young man was standing on the rail, one hand on the rigging, and before she could so much as draw breath, he let go and was gone.
Paris
Michael was worried for Joan; she sat slumped in the coach, not bothering to look out of the window, until a faint waft of the cool breeze touched her face. The smell was so astonishing that it drew her out of the shell of shocked misery in which she had traveled from the docks.
“Mother o’ God!” she said, clapping a hand to her nose. “What is that?”
Michael dug in his pocket and pulled out the grubby rag of his handkerchief, looking dubiously at it.
“It’s the public cemeteries. I’m sorry, I didna think—”
“Moran taing.” She seized the damp cloth from him and held it over her face, not caring. “Do the French not bury folk in their cemeteries?” Because, judging from the smell, a thousand corpses had been thrown out on wet ground and left to rot, and the sight of darting, squabbling flocks of black corbies in the distance did nothing to correct this impression.
“They do.” Michael felt exhausted—it had been a terrible morning—but struggled to pull himself together. “It’s all marshland over there, though; even coffins buried deep—and most of them aren’t—work their way through the ground in a few months. When there’s a flood—and there’s a flood whenever it rains—what’s left of the coffins falls apart, and …” He swallowed, just as pleased that he’d not eaten any breakfast.
“There’s talk of maybe moving the bones at least, putting them in an ossuary, they call it. There are mine workings, old ones, outside the city—over there”—he pointed with his chin—“and perhaps … but they havena done anything about it yet,” he added in a rush, pinching his nose fast to get a breath in through his mouth. It didn’t matter whether you breathed through your nose or your mouth, though; the air was thick enough to taste.
She looked as ill as he felt, or maybe worse, her face the color of spoilt custard. She’d vomited when the crew had finally pulled the suicide aboard, pouring gray water and slimed with the seaweed that had wrapped round his legs and drowned him. There were still traces of sick down her front, and her dark hair was lank and damp, straggling out from under her cap. She hadn’t slept at all, of course—neither had he.
He couldn’t take her to the convent in this condition. The nuns maybe wouldn’t mind, but she would. He stretched up and rapped on the ceiling of the carriage.
“Monsieur?”
“Au chateau, vite!”
He’d take her to his house first. It wasn’t much out of the way, and the convent wasn’t expecting her at any particular day or hour. She could wash, have something to eat, and put herself to rights. And if it saved him from walking into his house alone, well, they did say a kind deed carried its own reward.
* * *
By the time they’d reached the Rue Trémoulins, Joan had forgotten—partly—her various reasons for distress, in the sheer excitement of being in Paris. She had never seen so many people in one place at the same time—and that was only the folk coming out of Mass at a parish church! Round the corner, a pavement of fitted stones stretched wider than the whole River Ness, and those stones covered from one side to the other in barrows and wagons and stalls, rioting with fruit and vegetables and flowers and fish and meat … She’d given Michael back his filthy handkerchief and was panting like a dog, turning her face to and fro, trying to draw all the wonderful smells into herself at once.
“Ye look a bit better,” Michael said, smiling at her. He was still pale himself, but he, too, seemed happier. “Are ye hungry yet?”
“I’m famished!” She cast a starved look at the edge of the market. “Could we stop, maybe, and buy an apple? I’ve a bit of money.…” She fumbled for the coins in her stocking top, but he stopped her.