Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)

A week spent working in the cowshed was intended as punishment for her flighty behavior in the marketplace, but Joan was grateful for it. There was nothing better for steadying the nerves than cows.

Granted, the convent’s cows were not quite like her mother’s sweet-tempered, shaggy red Hieland coos, but if you came right down to it, a cow was a cow, and even a French-speaking wee besom like the present Mirabeau was no match for Joan MacKimmie, who’d driven kine to and from the shielings for years and fed her mother’s kine in the byre beside the house with sweet hay and the leavings from supper.

With that in mind, she circled Mirabeau thoughtfully, eyeing the steadily champing jaws and the long slick of blackish-green drool that hung down from slack pink lips. She nodded once, slipped out of the cowshed, and made her way down the allée behind it, picking what she could find. Mirabeau, presented with a bouquet of fresh grasses, tiny daisies, and—delicacy of all delicacies—fresh sorrel, bulged her eyes half out of her head, opened her massive jaw, and inhaled the sweet stuff. The ominous tail ceased its lashing and the massive creature stood as if turned to stone, aside from the ecstatically grinding jaws.

Joan sighed in satisfaction, sat down, and, resting her head on Mirabeau’s monstrous flank, got down to business. Her mind, released, took up the next worry of the day.

Had Michael spoken to his friend Pépin? And if so, had he told him what she’d said, or just asked whether he kent the Comte St. Germain? Because if “tell him not to do it” referred to the same thing, then plainly the two men must be acquent with each other.

She had got thus far in her own ruminations when Mirabeau’s tail began to switch again. She hurriedly stripped the last of the milk from Mirabeau’s teats and snatched the bucket out of the way, standing up in a hurry. Then she saw what had disturbed the cow.

The man in the dove-gray coat was standing in the door to the shed, watching her. She hadn’t noticed before, in the market, but he had a handsome dark face, though rather hard about the eyes, and with a chin that brooked no opposition. He smiled pleasantly at her, though, and bowed.

“Mademoiselle. I must ask you, please, to come with me.”



MICHAEL WAS IN the warehouse, stripped to his shirtsleeves and sweating in the hot, wine-heady atmosphere, when Jared appeared, looking disturbed.

“What is it, cousin?” Michael wiped his face on a towel, leaving black streaks; the crew was clearing the racks on the southeast wall, and there were years of filth and cobwebs behind the most ancient casks.

“Ye haven’t got that wee nun in your bed, have ye, Michael?” Jared lifted a beetling gray brow at him.

“Have I what?”

“I’ve just had a message from the Mother Superior of le Couvent des Anges, saying that one Sister Gregory appears to have been abducted from their cowshed, and wanting to know whether you might possibly have anything to do with the matter.”

Michael stared at his cousin for a moment, unable to take this in.

“Abducted?” he said stupidly. “Who would be kidnapping a nun? What for?”

“Well, now, there ye have me.” Jared was carrying Michael’s coat over his arm and at this point handed it to him. “But maybe best ye go to the convent and find out.”



“FORGIVE ME, MOTHER,” Michael said carefully. Mother Hildegarde looked as though a breath would make her roll across the floor, wizened as a winter apple. “Did ye think…is it possible that Sister J—Sister Gregory might have…left of her own accord?”

The old nun gave him a look that revised his opinion of her state of health instantly.

“We did,” she said dryly. “It happens. However”—she raised a sticklike finger—“one: there were signs of a considerable struggle in the cowshed. A full bucket of milk not merely spilt but apparently thrown at something, the manger overturned, the door left open, and two of the cows escaped into the herb garden.” Another finger. “Two: had Sister Gregory experienced doubt regarding her vocation, she was quite free to leave the convent after speaking with me, and she knew that.”

One more finger, and the old nun’s black eyes bored into his. “And three: had she felt it necessary to leave suddenly and without informing us, where would she go? To you, Monsieur Murray. She knows no one else in Paris, does she?”

“I—well, no, not really.” He was flustered, almost stammering, confusion and a burgeoning alarm for Joan making it difficult to think.

“But you have not seen her since you brought us the chalice and paten—and I thank you and your cousin with the deepest sentiments of gratitude, monsieur—which would be yesterday afternoon?”

“No.” He shook his head, trying to clear it. “No, Mother.”

Mother Hildegarde nodded, her lips nearly invisible, pressed together amid the lines of her face.

“Did she say anything to you on that occasion? Anything that might assist us in discovering her?”

“I—well…” Jesus, should he tell her what Joan had said about the voices she heard? It couldn’t have anything to do with this, surely, and it wasna his secret to share. On the other hand, Joan had said she meant to tell Mother Hildegarde about them…

“You’d better tell me, my son.” The reverend mother’s voice was somewhere between resignation and command. “I see she told you something.”

“Well, she did, then, Mother,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face in distraction. “But I canna see how it has anything to do—she hears voices,” he blurted, seeing Mother Hildegarde’s eyes narrow dangerously.

The eyes went round.

“She what?”

“Voices,” he said helplessly. “They come and say things to her. She thinks maybe they’re angels, but she doesn’t know. And she can see when folk are going to die. Sometimes,” he added dubiously. “I don’t know whether she can always say.”

“Par le sang sacré de Jésus Christ,” the old nun said, sitting up straight as an oak sapling. “Why did she not—well, never mind about that. Does anyone else know this?”

He shook his head. “She was afraid to tell anyone. That’s why—well, one reason why—she came to the convent. She thought you might believe her.”

“I might,” Mother Hildegarde said dryly. She shook her head rapidly, making her veil flap. “Nom de Dieu! Why did her mother not tell me this?”

“Her mother?” Michael said stupidly.

“Yes! She brought me a letter from her mother, very kind, asking after my health and recommending Joan to me—but surely her mother would have known!”

“I don’t think she—wait.” He remembered Joan fishing out the carefully folded note from her pocket. “The letter she brought—it was from Claire Fraser. That’s the one you mean?”

“Of course!”

He took a deep breath, a dozen disconnected pieces falling suddenly into a pattern. He cleared his throat and raised a tentative finger.

“One, Mother: Claire Fraser is the wife of Joan’s stepfather. But she’s not Joan’s mother.”