Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)

They had humored her, given her a habit, provided her with paint and brushes, vellum and parchment, and she had shown some signs of being aware of her surroundings—would talk sometimes and knew her sister. But then the birth had come, inexorable.

“She had refused to think about it,” Mrs. Simpson said, with a sigh. “But there you were…pink and slimy and loud.” Soeur Emmanuelle, unable to cope with the situation, lost her tentative grip on sanity and reverted to her earlier state of blank detachment.

So I drove my own mother to insanity and destroyed her life. Her heart had risen into her throat, a hard, pulsing lump that hurt with each beat. Still, she had to speak.

“The shock, you said.” She licked dry lips. “Was it just…me? I mean, was it rape, do you think?”

To Minnie’s infinite relief, Mrs. Simpson looked aghast at the word.

“Nom de Dieu! No. No, certainly not.” Her mouth twisted a little as she recovered from the brief shock. “Say what you will about Raphael, I’m sure he’s never taken a woman who wasn’t willing. Mind, he can make them willing in very short order.”

Minnie didn’t want to hear one word about willing women and her father.

“Where, exactly, are we going?” she asked in a firm voice. “Where is my mother?”

“In her own world, ma chère.”



IT WAS A modest farm cottage, standing by itself at the edge of a broad, sunny field, though the house itself was sheltered by well-grown oaks and beeches. Perhaps a quarter mile farther on was a small village that boasted a surprisingly large stone church, with a tall spire.

“I wanted her to be close enough to hear the bells,” Mrs. Simpson explained, nodding toward the distant church as their coach came to a halt outside the cottage. “They don’t keep the hours of praise as a Catholic abbey would, of course, but she doesn’t usually realize that, and the sound gives her comfort.”

She looked at Minnie for a long moment, biting her lip, doubt plain in her eyes. Minnie touched her aunt’s hand, as gently as she could, though the pulse beating in her ears nearly deafened her.

“I won’t hurt her,” she whispered in French. “I promise you.”

The look of doubt didn’t leave her aunt’s eyes, but her face relaxed a little and she nodded to the groom outside, who opened the door and offered his arm to help her down.

An anchorite, her aunt had said; Sister Emmanuelle believed herself to be an anchorite. A hermitess, fixed in place, her only duty that of prayer. “She feels…secure, I think,” Mrs. Simpson had said, though the creases in her brow showed the shadow of long worry. “Safe, you know?”

“Safe from the world?” Minnie had asked. Her aunt had given her a very direct look, and the creases in her brow grew deeper.

“Safe from everything,” she had said. “And everyone.”

And so Minerva now followed her aunt to the door, filled with a mixture of anxiety, astonishment, sorrow, and—unavoidably—hope.

She’d heard of anchorites, of course; they were mentioned frequently in religious histories—of saints, monasteries, persecutions, reformations—but at the moment the word conjured up only a ridiculous vision of St. Simeon Stylites, who had lived on top of a pillar for thirty years—and, when his niece was orphaned, generously set her up with her very own pillar, next to his. After a few years of this life, the niece had reportedly climbed down and decamped with a man, much to the disapproval of the history’s author.

The door of the cottage opened, revealing a large, cheerful-looking woman who greeted Miriam Simpson warmly and looked with pleasant inquiry at Minnie.

“This is Miss Rennie,” Mrs. Simpson said, gesturing toward Minnie. “I’ve brought her to see my sister, Mrs. Budger.”

Mrs. Budger’s sparse gray brows rose toward her cap, but she made a brief bob in Minnie’s direction.

“Your servant, mum,” she said, and flapped her apron at a large calico cat. “Shoo, cat. The lady’s none o’ your business. He knows it’s nearly time for Sister’s tea,” she explained. “Come in, ladies, the kettle’s a-boiling already.”

Minnie was in a fever of impatience, this interrupted by stabs of icy terror.

“Soeur Emmanuelle, she still calls herself,” Mrs. Simpson had explained on the way. “She spends her days—and often her nights”—her wide brow had creased at the words—“in prayer, but she does have visitors. People who’ve heard of her, who come to ask her prayers for one thing or another.

“At first, I was afraid,” she’d said, and turned to look out the coach window at a passing farm wagon, “that they’d upset her, telling her their troubles. But she seems…better when she’s listened to someone.”

“Does she…talk to them?” Minnie had asked. Her aunt had glanced at her, then paused for a few seconds too long before saying, “Sometimes,” and turning toward the window again.

It doesn’t matter, she told herself, clenching her fists in the folds of her skirt to avoid strangling Mrs. Budger, who was slowly, slowly puttering around the hearth, assembling a few slices of buttered bread, a wedge of cheese, and a mug on a tray, at the same time fetching down a chipped teapot and three more stone mugs, a dented tin tea caddy, and a small, sticky blue pot of honey. It doesn’t matter if she won’t speak to me. It doesn’t even matter if she can’t hear me. I just want to see her!





8





THE BOOK OF HOURS


IT WAS A TINY stone building with a thatch; Minnie thought it must once have been a lambing shed or something of the kind. The thought made her inhale, nostrils flaring—and she blinked in surprise. There was certainly a smell, but it wasn’t the warm agricultural fug of animals; it was the faint tang of incense.

Mrs. Simpson glanced up at the sun, halfway down the sky.

“You won’t have long,” she said, grunting a little as she lifted the heavy bar from the door. “It’s almost time for None—what she thinks is None. When she hears the bells, she won’t do anything until the prayer is done, and often she’s silent afterward.”

“None?”

“The hours,” Mrs. Simpson said, pushing the door open. “Hurry, if you want her to speak with you.”

Minnie was bewildered, but she did certainly want her mother to speak with her. She nodded briefly and ducked under the lintel into a sort of glowing gloom.

The glow came from a single large candle set in a tall iron stand and from a brazier on the floor next to it. Fragrant smoke rose from both, drifting near the sooty beams of the low ceiling. A dim light suffused the room, seeming to gather around the figure of a woman dressed in white robes, kneeling at a crude prie-dieu.

The woman turned, startled at the sound of Minnie’s entry, and froze at sight of her.

Minnie felt much the same but forced herself to walk forward, slowly. Instinctively, she held out a hand, like one does to a strange dog, presenting her knuckles to be sniffed.