“What does it say, Grannie? What does it say?”
Germain was pressed up tight against my side, suddenly eager to look.
“Do you want to read it yourself?” I asked, smiling and offering it to him. He shook his head violently, blond hair flying.
“You,” he said, husky. “You, Grannie. Please.”
“Mon cher petit ami,
We have just found a new house, but it will never be home until you are here.
Your sisters miss you terribly （they have sent locks of their hair— in case you were wondering what these straggly things are—or in case you’ve forgotten what they look like, they say. Joanie’s hair is the light brown, and Félicité’s the dark one. The yellow ones belong to the cat）， and Papa longs for you to come and help him. He forbids the girls to go into taverns to deliver the papers and broadsheets—though they want to!
You also have two new little brothers who—”
“Two?” Germain grabbed the page from me and held it as near the candle as he could without setting it on fire. “Did she say two?”
“Yes!” I was nearly as excited as he was to hear it, and bent over the page, shoulder-to-shoulder with him. “Read the next bit!”
He straightened up a little and swallowed, then read on:
“We were all very surprised, as you might think! To be honest, I had been afraid all the time, to think about what the new baby might be. Because I wanted to see a child just like Henri-Christian, of course—to feel as though we had him back—but I knew that couldn’t happen, and at the same time, I was afraid that the new little one might be a dwarf, too—maybe your Grannie has told you that people who are born like that have a lot of troubles; Henri-Christian nearly died several times when he was very small, and Papa told me long ago about some of the dwarf-children he had known in Paris, and that most didn’t live a long life.
But a new baby is always a surprise and a miracle and never what you expect. When you were born, I was so enchanted that I would sit by your cradle and watch you sleep. Just letting the candle burn down because I couldn’t bear to put it out and let the night hide you from me.
We thought at first, when the babies were born, that perhaps we should name one of them Henri and the other Christian, but the girls wouldn’t have it. They both said that Henri-Christian was not like anyone else, and no one else should have his name.
“Papa and I agreed that they were right”—Germain was nodding his head as he read—“and so one of your brothers is named Alexandre and the other one Charles-Claire …”
“What?” I said, incredulous. “Charles-Claire?”
“… for your Grandda and Grannie,” Germain read, and looked up, grinning hugely at me.
“Go on,” I said, nudging him. He nodded and looked back at the page, running his finger along the words to find his place.
“So,” he read, and his voice choked suddenly, then steadied. “So,” he repeated, “please, mon cher fils, come home. I love you and I need you to be here, so the new house will be home again.
“With my love always …”
He pressed his lips tight together, and I saw tears well in his eyes, still fixed on the paper.
“Maman,” he whispered, and pressed the letter to his chest.
IT WAS ANOTHER hour before the children were put to bed—Germain among them—and I found myself once more in our airy bedroom, this time with Jamie. He stood at the end of the open floor, clad in his shirt, looking out over the night below, while I wriggled out of my stays, sighing in relief as the cool night breeze passed through my shift.
“Are your ears ringing, Sassenach?” he said, turning and smiling at me. “It’s been some time since I heard so much talk in such a small space.”
“Mm-hmm.” I came and put my arms round his waist, feeling the weight of the day and the evening slip away. “It’s so quiet up here. I can hear the crickets in the honeysuckle round the privy.”
He groaned and rested his chin on top of my head, letting me hold a little of his weight.
“Dinna mention privies. I’m nay more than half done wi’ the one for your surgery. And if we’ve much more company like tonight, I’m going to have to dig another for the house within a month.”
“I know you know that Roger would do it if you asked,” I remarked. “You just won’t let him.”
“Mmphm. He wouldna do it right.”
“Is there an art to digging privies?” I asked this, teasing, because if Jamie was a perfectionist about anything—and in all truth, he was a perfectionist about quite a number of things, nearly all having to do with tools or weapons—it was digging a proper privy. “Wasn’t it Voltaire who said that the perfect is the enemy of the good?”