Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)

“You are willing to marry dis man?” he asked. “I see he is rich, but maybe better to take a poor man who will treat you well.”


“Ze is zes maanden zwanger, idioot,” said the minister’s wife. “She’s six months gone with child.” “Is dit die schurk die je zwanger heeft gemaakt?” She removed the pipe from the corner of her mouth and gestured from the door to Minnie’s belly: “He’s the no-good who got you pregnant?” A hefty kick from the occupant made Minnie grunt and double over.

“Ja, is die schurk,” she assured the woman, glancing over her shoulder to the door, where Hal’s shadow in the window was visible, a larger shadow that must be Harry behind him.

The men entered with a blast of winter air and the woman exchanged a look with her husband. Both shrugged, and the minister opened the book and began thumbing through it in a helpless sort of way.

Harry smiled reassuringly at Minnie and patted her hand before lining up solidly beside Hal. Oddly enough, she did feel reassured. If a man like Harry was Hal’s good friend, then perhaps—just perhaps—she wasn’t wrong about him.

Not that it would make any difference at this point, she thought, feeling a strangely pleasant shiver run up her back. It felt as though she were about to jump off a cliff but feeling a great pair of wings unfurling at her back, even as she looked out into the wind.

“Mag ik uw volledige naam alstublieft?” “What are your names, please?” The landlady had pulled out a ratty register book—it might be the accounts for the pub, Minnie thought, looking at the stained pages. But the woman turned to a clean, blank page at the back of the book and dipped her quill, expectant.

Hal looked blank for a moment, then said firmly, “Harold Grey.”

“Only two names?” Minnie said, surprised. “No titles?”

“No,” he said. “It’s not the Duke of Pardloe or even the Earl of Melton you’re marrying. Just me. Sorry to disappoint you, if that’s what you thought,” he added, in a tone that actually sounded apologetic.

“Not at all,” she said politely.

“My middle name’s Patricius,” he blurted. “Harold Patricius Gerard Bleeker Grey.”

“Really?”

“Ik na gat niet allemaal opschrijven,” the woman objected. “I’m not going to write all that.”

“Bleeker—dat is Nederlands,” the minister said, in surprised approval. “Your family is Dutch?”

“My father’s mother’s mother,” Hal said, equally surprised.

The woman shrugged and wrote down the words, repeating, “Harold…Bleeker…Grey,” to herself. “En u?” she asked, looking up at Minnie.

Minnie would have thought her heart couldn’t go any faster, but she was wrong. Loose as her stays were, she felt light-headed, and before she could gather enough breath to speak, Hal stepped in.

“She’s called Wilhelmina Rennie,” he told the woman.

“Actually, it’s Minerva Wattiswade,” she said, getting a solid breath. Hal looked down at her, frowning.

“Wattiswade? What’s Wattiswade?”

“Not what,” she said, with exaggerated patience. “Who. Me, in fact.”

This appeared to be too much for Hal, who looked to Harry for help.

“She means her name isn’t Rennie, old man. It’s Wattiswade.”

“Nobody’s named Wattiswade,” Hal objected, transferring the frown back to Minnie. “I’m not marrying you under an assumed name.”

“I’m not bloody marrying you under an assumed name!” she said. “Gah!”

“What—”

“Your bloody baby kicked me in the liver!”

“Oh.” Hal looked somewhat abashed. “You mean your name really is Wattiswade, then.”

“Yes, I do.”

He took a deep breath.

“All right. Wattiswade. Why—never mind. You’ll tell me later why you’ve been calling yourself Rennie.”

“No, I won’t.”

He glanced at her, brows raised high, and she could see him—for once—debating whether to say something. But then his eyes lost the look of a man talking to himself and focused on hers.

“All right,” he said softly, and held out his hand to her, palm upward.

She took another breath, looked out into the void, and jumped.

“Cunnegunda,” she said, and put her hand in his. “Minerva Cunnegunda Wattiswade.”

He said nothing, but she could feel him vibrating slightly. She carefully didn’t look at him. Harry seemed to be arguing about something with the woman—something to do with the need for a second witness, she thought, but she couldn’t concentrate enough to make out the words. The smell of tobacco smoke and stale sweat was making her gorge rise again, and she swallowed hard, several times.

All right. They’d decided that Mrs. Ten Boom could be the second witness. Good. Mortimer turned a somersault, landing heavily. Perspiration had broken out on Minnie’s temples, and her ears felt hot.

Suddenly she was possessed by the fear that her father would burst through the door at any moment. She wasn’t afraid of his stopping this impromptu ceremony; she was quite sure Hal wouldn’t let him—and that certainty steadied her. Still…she didn’t want him here. This was hers alone.

“Hurry,” she said to Hal, in a low voice. “Please, hurry.”

“Get on with it,” he said to the minister, in a voice that wasn’t particularly loud but plainly expected to be obeyed. The Reverend Ten Boom blinked, coughed, and opened his book.

It was all in Dutch; she could have followed the words but didn’t—what echoed in her ears were the never-spoken phrases from the letters.

Not Esmé’s—his. Letters written to a dead wife, in passionate grief, in fury, in despair. He might as well have punctured his own wrist with the sharpened quill and written those words in blood. She looked up at him now, white as the winter sky, as though all the blood had run out of his body, leaving him drained.

But his eyes were a pale and piercing blue when he turned his dark-browed face toward her, and the fire in him was not quenched, by any means.

You didn’t deserve him, she thought toward the absent Esmé and rested her free hand on her gently heaving stomach. But you loved him. Don’t fret; I’ll take care of them both.





AUTHOR’S NOTE


IF YOU NEVER read Madeleine L’Engle’s marvelous A Wrinkle in Time in your younger years, it’s not too late. It’s a wonderful story and I highly recommend it. If you did read it, though, you’ll certainly remember this iconic line: There is such a thing as a tesseract.