“What’s that?”
Jamie tossed off the rest of his gin, belched slightly, and set down his cup.
“He says Cyrus thinks like a fish.”
RATHER TO MY surprise, Fanny didn’t seem averse to Cyrus visiting more formally, when I carefully broached the subject with her.
“He doesn’t really speak any English, though,” she said thoughtfully. “A lot of the people up at that end of the cove don’t, Germain told me.”
Germain was right; many of the fisher-folk spoke only Gaelic; it was one reason why they remained as a tight-knit group, somewhat separate from the other residents of the Ridge.
“I’m learning the Gàidhlig,” she assured me, pronouncing it correctly. “And I suppose I’d learn more from Cyrus.”
“Why?” I asked, rather astonished. “I mean—what makes you want to learn Gaelic?”
She flushed a little but didn’t look away or down. That strong sense of self-possession was one of the things that occasionally made Fanny a little unnerving.
“I heard them singing,” she said. “In the church, with Roger Mac. Some of the Wilsons and Mr. Greig and his brother came down to listen to him preach—I think you were gone that day, so you wouldn’t have heard them—but after the sermon, Roger Mac asked Mr. Greig if he knew …” She shook her head. “I can’t even say the name, but it was a song in Gaelic, and they sang it, all of them, and they were beating their hands on the benches like drums and—the whole church … it was …” She looked at me, helpless to explain, but I could see the light in her face. “Alive.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry I missed that.”
“If Cyrus comes to visit me, maybe some of his family will come down and sing again,” she said. “Besides,” she added, a slight shadow crossing her face, “with Germain and Jemmy gone, Cyrus will be somebody to talk to, whether he understands me or not.”
HER MENTION OF Germain made me slightly wary, and I went to find Jamie, who was repairing the barn wall where Clarence, in a fit of pique, had kicked it and broken one of the boards.
“Do you think maybe you should talk to Hiram before Cyrus comes?” I said. “I mean, naturally, we don’t want to tell anyone about … where Fanny came from. But if Cyrus were to—er—make any, um, inappropriate moves toward her … she might—feel obliged to respond?”
He’d sat back on his heels to listen to me, and at this, he laughed and stood up, shaking his head.
“Nay bother, Sassenach,” he said. “He’ll not lay a finger on the lass, or Hiram will break his neck, and Hiram will ha’ told him so.”
“Well, that’s reassuring. Do you think perhaps you should drop a word in his ear yourself? As Fanny’s loco parentis, I mean?”
“Locum,” he said, “and no. I’ll just bid him welcome and terrify him wi’ my presence. He won’t dare breathe on her, Sassenach.”
“All right,” I said, still a little dubious. “I think she believed us—believed you—when we told her we didn’t expect her to become a whore, but … she spent half her life in a brothel, Jamie. Even if she wasn’t … participating, her sister was, and Fanny surely knew everything that was going on. That sort of experience leaves a mark.”
He paused, head bent, looking down at the ground, where a small pile of fresh mule apples marked Clarence’s mood.
“Ye healed me of something a good deal worse, Sassenach,” he said, and touched my hand gently. He’d touched me with his right hand, the maimed one.
“I didn’t,” I protested. “You did that yourself—you had to. All I did was … er …”
“Drug me wi’ opium and fornicate me back to life? Aye, that.”
“It wasn’t fornication,” I said, rather primly—though my hand turned, my fingers lacing tight with his. “We were married.”
“Aye, it was,” he said, and his mouth tightened, as well as his grip. “It wasna only you I was swiving, and ye ken that as well as I do.”
If I did, it wasn’t anything I was ever going to admit, let alone discuss, and I let it lie.
“But I grant ye, neither of us could do the like for Frances. Maybe Cyrus can—by not touchin’ her.” He kissed my hand, let it go, and bent to pick up his hammer.
OF COURSE I had seen Cyrus Crombie before, at church, but beyond a second glance at his height hadn’t really taken notice of him. Jamie had arranged for him to come to the house later in the week with a couple of cousins, to help with the framing for the third story—and be formally presented to Fanny.