Outlander Novella [01] The Space Between by Diana Gabaldon Page B

moment when she’d met him, alone at the door. Greeted him briefly and embraced him on impulse. And he’d felt an instant sense of relief, as though she’d taken a heavy burden from his heart. Or maybe lanced a boil on his spirit, as she might one on his bum.
    That thought made him smile. He didn’t know what she was—the talk near Lallybroch painted her as everything from a witch to an angel, with most of the opinion hovering cautiously around “faerie,” for the Auld Ones were dangerous, and you didn’t talk too much about them—but he liked her. So did Da and Young Ian, and that counted for a lot. And Uncle Jamie, of course—though everyone said, very matter-of-fact, that Uncle Jamie was bewitched. He smiled wryly at that. Aye, if being mad in love with your wife was bewitchment.
    If anyone outside the family kent what she’d told them—he cut that thought short. It wasn’t something he’d forget, but it wasn’t something he wanted to think about just yet, either. The gutters of Paris running with blood … He glanced down involuntarily, but the gutters were full of the usual assortment of animal and human sewage, dead rats, and bits of rubbish too far gone to be salvaged for food even by the street beggars.
    He walked, making his way slowly through the crowded streets, past La Chapelle and theTuileries. If he walked enough, sometimes he could fall asleep without too much wine.
    He sighed, elbowing his way through a group of buskers outside a tavern, turning back toward the Rue Trémoulins. Some days, his head was like a bramble patch: thorns catching at him no matter which way he turned, and no path leading out of the tangle.
    Paris wasn’t a large city, but it was a complicated one; there was always somewhere else to walk. He crossed the Place de la Corcorde, thinking of what Claire had told them, seeing there in his mind the tall shadow of a terrible machine.
    * * *
    Joan had had her dinner with Mother Hildegarde, a lady so ancient and holy that Joan had feared to breathe too heavily, lest Mother Hildegarde fragment like a stale croissant and go straight off to heaven in front of her. Mother Hildegarde had been delighted with the letter Joan had delivered, though; it brought a faint flush to her face.
    “From my … er …” Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, what was the French word for “stepmother”? “Ahh … the wife of my …” Fittens, she didn’t know the word for “stepfather,” either! “The wife of my father,” she ended weakly.
    “You are the daughter of my good friend Claire!” Mother had exclaimed. “And how is she?”
    “Bonny, er … 
bon
, I mean, last I saw her,” said Joan, and then tried to explain, but there was a lot of French being spoken very fast, and she gave up and accepted the glass of wine that Mother Hildegarde offered her. She was going to be a sot long before she took her vows, she thought, trying to hide her flushed face by bending down to pat Mother’s wee dog, a fluffy, friendly creature the color of burnt sugar, named Bouton.
    Whether it was the wine or Mother’s kindness, her wobbly spirit steadied. Mother had welcomed her to the community and kissed her forehead at the end of the meal, before sending her off in the charge of Sister Eustacia to see the convent.
    Now she lay on her narrow cot in the dormitory, listening to the breathing of a dozen other postulants. It sounded like a byre full of cows and had much the same warm, humid scent—bar the manure. Her eyes filled with tears, the vision of the homely stone byre at Balriggan sudden and vivid in her mind. She swallowed them back, though, pinching her lips together. A few of the girls sobbed quietly, missing home and family, but she wouldn’t be one of them. She was older than most—a few were nay more than fourteen—and she’d promised God to be brave.
    It hadn’t been bad during the afternoon. Sister Eustacia had been very kind, taking herand a couple of other new postulants round the