wide-eyed, but otherwise presentable. My hair, however, had seized the opportunity to curl madly in all directions, and was writhing out of its hairpins in excellent imitation of Medusa’s locks. I yanked the pins out impatiently, and began to twist up my curls.
There was a woman inside the shop, leaning across the counter. There were three small children with her, and I watched with half an eye as she turned from her business to address them impatiently, swatting with her reticule at the middle one, a boy who was fiddling with several stalks of fresh anise that stood in a pail of water on the floor.
It was an apothecary’s shop; glancing up, I saw the name “Haugh” above the door, and felt a thrill of recognition. I had bought herbs here, during the brief time I had lived in Edinburgh. The decor of the window had been augmented sometime since by the addition of a large jar of colored water, in which floated something vaguely humanoid. A fetal pig, or perhaps an infant baboon; it had leering, flattened features that pressed against the rounded side of the jar in a disconcerting fashion.
“Well, at least I look better than
I looked better than the woman inside, too, I thought. Her business concluded, she was stuffing her purchase into the bag she carried, her thin face frowning as she did so. She had the rather pasty look of a city dweller, and her skin was deeply lined, with sharp creases running from nose to mouth, and a furrowed forehead.
“De’il tak’ ye, ye wee ratten,” she was saying crossly to the little boy as they all clattered out of the shop together. “Have I no told ye time and again to keep yer paws in yer pockets?”
“Excuse me.” I stepped forward, interrupting, impelled by a sudden irresistible curiosity.
“Aye?” Distracted from maternal remonstration, she looked blankly at me. Up close, she looked even more harried. The corners of her mouth were pinched, and her lips folded in—no doubt because of missing teeth.
“I couldn’t help admiring your children,” I said, with as much pretense of admiration as I could manage on short notice. I beamed kindly at them. “Such pretty babies! Tell me, how old are they?”
Her jaw dropped, confirming the absence of several teeth. She blinked at me, then said, “Oh! Well, that’s maist kind o’ ye, mum. Ah…Maisri here is ten,” she said, nodding at the eldest girl, who was in the act of wiping her nose on her sleeve, “Joey’s eight—tak’ yer finger out o’ yer nose, ye clattie imp!” she hissed, then turned and proudly patted her youngest on the head. “And wee Polly’s just turned six this May.”
“Really!” I gazed at the woman affecting astonishment. “You scarcely look old enough to have children of that age. You must have married very young.”
She preened slightly, smirking.
“Och, no! Not so young as all that; why, I was all o’ nineteen when Maisri was born.”
“Amazing,” I said, meaning it. I dug in my pocket and offered the children each a penny, which they took with shy bobs of thanks. “Good day to you—and congratulations on your lovely family,” I said to the woman, and walked away with a smile and a wave.
Nineteen when the eldest was born, and Maisri was ten now. She was twenty-nine. And I, blessed by good nutrition, hygiene, and dentistry, not worn down by multiple pregnancies and hard physical labor, looked a good deal younger than she. I took a deep breath, pushed back my hair, and marched into the shadows of Carfax Close.
It was a longish, winding close, and the printshop was at the foot. There were thriving businesses and tenements on either side, but I had no attention to spare for anything beyond the neat white sign that hung by the door.
A. MALCOLM
PRINTER AND BOOKSELLER
it said, and beneath this,
I stretched out my hand and touched the black letters of the name. A. Malcolm. Alexander Malcolm. James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser. Perhaps.
Another minute, and I would lose my nerve. I shoved open the door and walked in.
There was a broad counter across the front of the room, with an open flap in it, and a rack to one side that held several trays of type. Posters and notices of all sorts were tacked up on the opposite wall; samples, no doubt.
The door into the back room was open, showing the bulky angular frame of a printing press. Bent over it, his back turned to me, was Jamie.
“Is that you, Geordie?” he asked, not turning around. He was dressed in shirt and breeches, and had a small tool of some kind in his hand, with which he was doing something to the innards of the press. “Took ye long enough. Did ye get the—”
“It isn’t Geordie,” I said. My voice was higher than usual. “It’s me,” I said. “Claire.”
He straightened up very slowly. He wore his hair long; a thick tail of a deep, rich auburn sparked with copper. I had time to see that the neat ribbon that tied it back was green, and then he turned around.
He stared at me without speaking. A tremor ran down the muscular throat as he swallowed, but still he didn’t say anything.
It was the same broad, good-humored face, dark blue eyes aslant the high, flat cheekbones of a Viking, long mouth curling at the ends as though always on the verge of smiling. The lines surrounding eyes and mouth were deeper, of course. The nose had changed just a bit. The knife-edge bridge was slightly thickened near the base by the ridge of an old, healed fracture. It made him look fiercer, I thought, but lessened that air of aloof reserve, and lent his appearance a new rough charm.
I walked through the flap in the counter, seeing nothing but that unblinking stare. I cleared my throat.
“When did you break your nose?”
The corners of the wide mouth lifted slightly.
“About three minutes after I last saw ye—Sassenach.”
There was a hesitation, almost a question in the name. There was no more than a foot between us. I reached out tentatively and touched the tiny line of the break, where the bone pressed white against the bronze of his
