The Space Between (Outlander, #7.5)(23)
“You’re a magicien; everyone knows that. You take newborn children and use their blood in your spells!”
“What?” he said, rather stupidly. He reached for his breeches but changed his mind. He got up and went to her instead, putting his hands on her shoulders.
“No,” he said, bending down to look her in the eye. “No, I do no such thing. Never.” He used all the force of sincerity he could summon, pushing it into her, and felt her waver a little, still fearful but less certain. He smiled at her.
“Who told you I was a magicien, for heaven’s sake? I am a philosophe, chérie—an inquirer into the mysteries of nature, no more. And I can swear to you, by my hope of heaven”—this being more or less nonexistent, but why quibble?—“that I have never, not once, used anything more than the water of a man-child in any of my investigations.”
“What, little boys’ piss?” she said, diverted. He let his hands relax but kept them on her shoulders.
“Certainly. It’s the purest water one can find. Collecting it is something of a chore, mind you”—she smiled at that; good—“but the process does not the slightest harm to the infant, who will eject the water whether anyone has a use for it or not.”
“Oh.” She was beginning to relax a little, but her hands were still pressed protectively over her belly, as though she felt the imminent child already. Not yet, he thought, pulling her against him and feeling his way gently into her body. But soon! He wondered if he should remain with her until it happened; the idea of feeling it as it happened inside her—to be an intimate witness to the creation of life itself! But there was no telling how long it might take. From the progress of his animalcula, it could be a day, even two.
Magic, indeed.
Why do men never think of that? he wondered. Most men—himself included—regarded the engendering of babies as necessity, in the case of inheritance, or nuisance, but this … But then, most men would never know what he now knew or see what he had seen.
Madeleine had begun to relax against him, her hands at last leaving her belly. He kissed her, with a real feeling of affection.
“It will be beautiful,” he whispered to her. “And once you are well and truly with child, I will buy your contract from Fabienne and take you away. I will buy you a house.”
“A house?” Her eyes went round. They were green, a deep, clear emerald, and he smiled at her again, stepping back.
“Of course. Now, go and sleep, my dear. I shall come again tomorrow.”
She flung her arms around him, and he had some difficulty in extracting himself, laughing, from her embraces. Normally he left a whore’s bed with no feeling save physical relief. But what he had done had made a connection with Madeleine that he had not experienced with any woman save Mélisande.
Mélisande. A sudden thought ran through him like the spark from a Leyden jar. Mélisande.
He looked hard at Madeleine, now crawling happily naked and white-rumped into bed, her wrapper thrown aside. That bottom … the eyes, the soft blond hair, the gold-white of fresh cream.
“Chérie,” he said, as casually as he might, pulling on his breeches, “how old are you?”
“Eighteen,” she said, without hesitation. “Why, monsieur?”
“Ah. A wonderful age to become a mother.” He pulled the shirt over his head and kissed his hand to her, relieved. He had known Mélisande Robicheaux in 1744. He had not, in fact, just committed incest with his own daughter.
It was only as he passed Madame Fabienne’s parlor on his way out that it occurred to him that Madeleine might possibly still be his granddaughter. That thought stopped him short, but he had no time to dwell on it, for Fabienne appeared in the doorway and motioned to him.
“A message, monsieur,” she said, and something in her voice touched his nape with a cold finger.
“Yes?”
“Ma?tre Grenouille begs the favor of your company at midnight tomorrow. In the square before Notre Dame de Paris.”
* * *
They didn’t have to practice custody of the eyes in the market. In fact, Sister George—the stout nun who oversaw these expeditions, warned them in no uncertain terms to keep a sharp eye out for short weight and uncivil prices, to say nothing of pickpockets.
“Pickpockets, Sister?” Mercy had said, her blond eyebrows all but vanishing into her veil. “But we are nuns—more or less,” she added hastily. “We have nothing to steal!”
Sister George’s big red face got somewhat redder, but she kept her patience.
“Normally that would be true,” she agreed. “But we—or I, rather—have the money with which to buy our food, and once we’ve bought it, you will be carrying it. A pickpocket steals to eat, n’est-ce pas? They don’t care whether you have money or food, and most of them are so depraved that they would willingly steal from God himself, let alone a couple of chick-headed postulants.”
For Joan’s part, she wanted to see everything, pickpockets included. To her delight, the market was the one she’d passed with Michael on her first day in Paris. True, the sight of it brought back the horrors and doubts of that first day, too—but, for the moment, she pushed those aside and followed Sister George into the fascinating maelstrom of color, smells, and shouting.
Filing away a particularly entertaining expression that she planned to make Sister Philomène explain to her—Sister Philomène was a little older than Joan, but painfully shy and with such delicate skin that she blushed like an apple at the least excuse—she followed Sister George and Sister Mathilde through the fishmonger’s section, where Sister George bargained shrewdly for a great quantity of sand dabs, scallops, tiny gray translucent shrimp, and an enormous sea salmon, the pale spring light shifting through its scales in colors that faded so subtly from pink to blue to silver and back that some of them had no name at all—so beautiful even in its death that it made Joan catch her breath with joy at the wonder of creation.