The Space Between (Outlander, #7.5)(3)

“How many nuns are named Mary?” she asked, out of curiosity. “It’s common, is it?”

“Oh, aye, ye said ye’d not seen a nun.” He’d stopped making fun of her, though, and answered seriously. “About half the nuns I’ve met seem to be called Sister Mary Something—ye ken, Sister Mary Polycarp, Sister Mary Joseph … like that.”

“And ye meet a great many nuns in the course o’ your business, do ye?” Michael Murray was a wine merchant, the junior partner of Fraser et Cie—and, judging from the cut of his clothes, did well enough at it.

His mouth twitched, but he answered seriously.

“Well, I do, really. Not every day, I mean, but the sisters come round to my office quite often—or I go to them. Fraser et Cie supplies wine to most o’ the monasteries and convents in Paris, and some will send a pair of nuns to place an order or to take away something special—otherwise, we deliver it, of course. And even the orders who dinna take wine themselves—and most of the Parisian houses do, they bein’ French, aye?—need sacramental wine for their chapels. And the begging orders come round like clockwork to ask alms.”

“Really.” She was fascinated: sufficiently so as to put aside her reluctance to look ignorant. “I didna ken … I mean … so the different orders do quite different things, is that what ye’re saying? What other kinds are there?”

He shot her a brief glance but then turned back, narrowing his eyes against the wind as he thought.

“Well … there’s the sort of nun that prays all the time—contemplative, I think they’re called. I see them in the cathedral all hours of the day and night. There’s more than one order of that sort, though; one kind wears gray habits and prays in the chapel of St. Joseph, and another wears black; ye see them mostly in the chapel of Our Lady of the Sea.” He glanced at her, curious. “Will it be that sort of nun that you’ll be?”

She shook her head, glad that the wind-chafing hid her blushes.

“No,” she said, with some regret. “That’s maybe the holiest sort of nun, but I’ve spent a good bit o’ my life being contemplative on the moors, and I didna like it much. I think I havena got the right sort of soul to do it verra well, even in a chapel.”

“Aye,” he said, and wiped back flying strands of hair from his face. “I ken the moors. The wind gets into your head after a bit.” He hesitated for a moment. “When my uncle Jamie—your da, I mean—ye ken he hid in a cave after Culloden?”

“For seven years,” she said, a little impatient. “Aye, everyone kens that story. Why?”

He shrugged.

“Only thinking. I was no but a wee bairn at the time, but I went now and then wi’ my mam, to take him food there. He’d be glad to see us, but he wouldna talk much. And it scared me to see his eyes.”

Joan felt a small shiver pass down her back, nothing to do with the stiff breeze. She saw—suddenly saw, in her head—a thin, dirty man, the bones starting in his face, crouched in the dank, frozen shadows of the cave.

“Da?” she scoffed, to hide the shiver that crawled up her arms. “How could anyone be scairt of him? He’s a dear, kind man.”

Michael’s wide mouth twitched at the corners.

“I suppose it would depend whether ye’d ever seen him in a fight. But—”

“Have you?” she interrupted, curious. “Seen him in a fight?”

“I have, aye. BUT—” he said, not willing to be distracted, “I didna mean he scared me. It was that I thought he was haunted. By the voices in the wind.”

That dried up the spit in her mouth, and she worked her tongue a little, hoping it didn’t show. She needn’t have worried; he wasn’t looking at her.

“My own da said it was because Jamie spent so much time alone, that the voices got into his head and he couldna stop hearing them. When he’d feel safe enough to come to the house, it would take hours sometimes before he could start to hear us again—Mam wouldna let us talk to him until he’d had something to eat and was warmed through.” He smiled, a little ruefully. “She said he wasna human ’til then—and, looking back, I dinna think she meant that as a figure of speech.”

“Well,” she said, but stopped, not knowing how to go on. She wished fervently that she’d known this earlier. Her da and his sister were coming on to France later, but she might not see him. She could maybe have talked to Da, asked him just what the voices in his head were like—what they said. Whether they were anything like the ones she heard.

* * *

Nearly twilight, and the rats were still dead. The comte heard the bells of Notre Dame calling sept and glanced at his pocket watch. The bells were two minutes before their time, and he frowned. He didn’t like sloppiness. He stood up and stretched himself, groaning as his spine cracked like the ragged volley of a firing squad. No doubt about it, he was aging, and the thought sent a chill through him.

If. If he could find the way forward, then perhaps … but you never knew, that was the devil of it. For a little while, he’d thought—hoped—that traveling back in time stopped the process of aging. That initially seemed logical, like rewinding a clock. But, then again, it wasn’t logical, because he’d always gone back farther than his own lifetime. Only once he’d tried to go back just a few years, to his early twenties. That was a mistake, and he still shivered at the memory.