Unexpected, she had called it.
“Not many have the gift.”
“It’s not what ye think.”
It wasn’t! The nuns made certain of it. A sin, they told me over and over at the things I saw, until I learned not to speak of it.
“I must be going. I hope to meet with Inspector Landry...”
Munro was to return and take me there, though there was some matter that he wanted to speak to a man about. I chose not to wait for him.
I returned to my room and gathered my bag with my notes.
I thanked Elizabeth again for the breakfast. As I prepared to leave, she laid a hand on my arm.
“Ye have a gift, my dear. Ye canna deny it, no more than ye can deny the air ye breathe. Dinna be afraid of it.”
There was more, a reminder that Munro had told me to wait for his return this morning. However, I was not inclined to wait.
The weather was agreeable for now, and I was able to catch the tram at the High Street that connected Albany Street to Parliament Square. It saved coin, as I had not yet been to the bank for additional funds.
The tram arrived on time, passengers departing, others like myself waiting to board.
I felt something as I stood in the queue of other passengers, vague, gone, then there again, that burned across my skin. I rubbed my arm as one might a bruise to ease the pain. Yet it was still there stronger now.
It was far too cold for insects, buzzing pests found in summer. Instead of merely bothersome, this was very much like a warning.
I looked about at a woman behind me with a shopping basket over her arm who was waiting as well. She was adjusting the purchases she’d already made and paid me no mind.
I then glanced down the sidewalk, past to the street, then at the tram with those already aboard.
I saw nothing unusual nor threatening as that warning prickle gradually faded.
“Miss?” The woman with the basket brought me back from that thought. Those before me had already climbed onto the tram. I did as well.
Yet, I instinctively searched the faces of those on the street as everyone was seated and the driver eased the lumbering tram into traffic.
What had I seen? Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Yet, I had felt...something that I instinctively sensed was a warning. But a warning of what? Or whom?
The air was sharp at the top level of the tram, much needed to clear the confusion from my thoughts, and the remnants of the nightmare dream from the night before.
Yet it lingered there along with Elizabeth Cheney’s parting words—dinna be afraid. A gift she had called it, something I could not deny. What did it mean and why had it returned after all these years?
I looked about at the other passengers as the tram lurched around a corner behind the team of horses—several men in wool suits, along with two women, one with a child beside her.
“I’m afraid!” she cried into her mother’s hand, even as her mother assured her that they would soon be at their destination and the tram would not fall over.
My own fingers tightened as a memory slipped out of the past. Two young children fleeing down the hallway of the Foundling Hospital. One pulled back on the other as I was pulled back into that memory.
“I’ll only slow ye down!” A hand pulled on mine. “Ye must go! Before they find out we’ve gone!” Abby’s hand slipped from mine. A friend in a place where there were no friends, only faces.
“I told ye. I’ll not leave without ye.”
She shook her head. “I’ll only slow ye doon.”
“Together!” I insisted. “We said we would leave together.” Plans made by those hardly old enough to understand. But we understood the pain of the lash.
“If they find ye, Lily, it will be worse than before. I’m afraid for ye.”
