Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone
- Автор: Гэблдон Диана
- Серия: Outlander #9
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Delacorte Press
- ISBN: 978-1-473-51900-8
- Жанр: Исторические приключения
Электронная книга - «Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone». Краткое содержание книги:
The past may seem the safest place to be . . . but it is the most dangerous time to be alive. . . .
Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising in 1746, and it took them twenty years to find each other again. Now the American Revolution threatens to do the same. It is 1779 and Claire and Jamie are at last reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children on Fraser’s Ridge. Having the family together is a dream the Frasers had thought impossible. Yet even in the North Carolina backcountry, the effects of war are being felt. Tensions in the Colonies are great and local feelings run hot enough to boil Hell’s teakettle. Jamie knows loyalties among his tenants are split and it won’t be long until the war is on his doorstep. Brianna and Roger have their own worry: that the dangers that provoked their escape from the twentieth century might catch up to them. Sometimes they question whether risking the perils of the 1700s—among them disease, starvation, and an impending war—was indeed the safer choice for their family. Not so far away, young William Ransom is still coming to terms with the discovery of his true father’s identity—and thus his own—and Lord John Grey has reconciliations to make, and dangers to meet . . . on his son’s behalf, and his own. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary War creeps ever closer to Fraser’s Ridge. And with the family finally together, Jamie and Claire have more at stake than ever before.
“No one, yet,” Jamie said, eyeing me. “But ye look like ye’re about to be, Sassenach. What’s happened?”
I set my basket on a sawhorse, sat down on another, and told them, pausing to gasp for breath or gulp water from the canteen Tom handed me.
“Nothin’ up that path but Captain Cunningham’s place, is there?” Tom observed.
“Ye mean they maybe didna go up that way by accident, aye?” Jamie stuck his head out of the coffin shed and looked up at the sky. “It’s going to rain soon. Be a pity if our friends find themselves stuck in the mud.”
Tom grunted in approval, and without further consultation went into his house, returning in less than a minute with an old leather hat on his head, a good rifle in his hand, a pistol in his belt, and a cartridge box slung over his bowed shoulder. He had a second pistol in his other hand, which he gave Jamie. Jamie nodded, checked the priming, and stuck it in his own belt. Absently touching his dirk, he nodded to me.
“Go get Young Ian, will ye, Sassenach? I saw him mowing in his upper field not an hour since.”
“But what—”
“Go,” he said, though mildly. “Dinna fash, Sassenach. It will be fine.”
I FOUND YOUNG Ian, not in his upper field, but in the woods nearby, rifle in hand.
“Don’t shoot!” I called, spotting him through the brush. “It’s me!”
“I couldna mistake ye for anything save a small bear or a large hog, Auntie,” he assured me as I pawed my way through a clump of dogwood toward him. “And I dinna want either one of those today.”
“Fine. How about a nice, fat pair of gunrunners?”
I explained as well as I could while jog-trotting along behind him as he detoured through the field in order to grab his scythe, which he thrust into my hands.
“I dinna think ye’ll have to use it, Auntie,” he said, grinning at the look on my face. “But if ye stand there blocking the trail, it would be a desperate man would try to go through ye.”
When we arrived, we discovered that the trail had already been effectively blocked by the first mule’s burden, which he had succeeded in shedding completely. When Ian and I showed up a little way below the gunrunners, the first mule, enjoying his new lightness of spirit, was nimbly climbing over the pile of bags, boxes, and wickerwork toward us, intent on joining his fellow, who was not letting his own pack stop him from browsing a large patch of blackberry brambles that edged the trail just there.
Evidently, we had arrived almost at the same time as Jamie and Tom MacLeod, for the two gunrunners had turned to gawk at me and Ian just as Jamie and Tom came into sight on the trail above them.
“Who the devil are you?” one of the men demanded, looking from me to Ian in bewilderment. Ian had tied up his hair in a topknot to keep it out of the way while mowing, and without his shirt, deeply tanned and tattooed, he looked very like the Mohawk he was. I didn’t want to think what I must look like, comprehensively disheveled and with my hair full of leaves and coming down, but I gripped my scythe and gave them a stern look.
“I’m Ian Òg Murray,” Ian said mildly, and nodded at me. “And that’s my auntie. Oops.” The first mule was nosing his way determinedly between us, causing us both to step off the path.
“I’m Ian Murray,” Ian repeated, stepping back his rifle in a relaxed-but-definitely-ready position across his chest.
“And I,” said a deep voice from above, “am Colonel James Fraser, of Fraser’s Ridge, and that’s my wife.” He moved into sight, broad-shouldered and tall against the light, with Tom behind him, sunlight glinting off his rifle.
“Catch that mule, will ye, Ian? This is my land. And who, may I ask, are you gentlemen?”
The men jerked in surprise and whirled to look upward—though one cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder, to keep an eye on the threat to the rear.
“Er … we’re … um …” The young man—he couldn’t be much more than twenty—exchanged a panicked look with his older companion. “I am Lieutenant Felix Summers, sir. Of—of His Majesty’s ship Revenge.”
Tom made a noise that might have been either menace or amusement.
“Who’s your friend, then?” he asked, nodding at the older gentleman, who might have been anything from a town vagrant to a backwoods hunter, but who looked somewhat the worse for drink, his nose and cheeks webbed with broken capillaries.
“I—believe his name is Voules, sir,” the lieutenant said. “He is not my friend.” His face had gone from a shocked white to a prim pink. “I hired him in Salisbury, to assist with—with my baggage.”
“I see,” Jamie said politely. “Are ye perhaps … lost, Lieutenant? I believe the nearest ocean is roughly three hundred miles behind you.”
“I am on leave from my ship,” the young man said, regaining his dignity. “I have come to visit … someone.”
“No prize for guessing who,” Tom said to Jamie, and lowered his rifle. “What d’ye want to do with ’em, Jamie?”
“My wife and I will take the lieutenant and his … man … down to the house for some refreshment,” Jamie said, bowing graciously to Summers. “Would ye maybe help Ian with—” He nodded toward the chaos scattered among the rocks. “And, Ian, once ye’ve got things in hand, go up and bring Captain Cunningham down to join us, will ye?”
Summers picked up the subtle difference between “invite” and “bring” just as well as Ian did, and stiffened, but he had little choice. He did have a pistol and an officer’s dirk in his belt, but I could see that the former wasn’t primed and therefore likely wasn’t loaded, either, and I doubted that he’d ever drawn his dirk with any motive beyond polishing it. Jamie didn’t even glance at the weapons, let alone ask for their surrender.
“I thank you, sir,” Summers said, turned on his heel, and shying only slightly as he passed me and my scythe, started down the trail, back stiff.
IT WAS NEARLY suppertime when Captain Cunningham arrived, not quite in Young Ian’s custody, but definitely in his company and not that pleased about it.
I’d fortunately had time to wash, comb oak leaves and spruce needles out of my hair, and generally put myself to rights while Jamie sat Lieutenant Summers and Mr. Voules down in the parlor and offered them beer. Voules accepted eagerly, Summers reluctantly—but they drank it. And now, two hours and four quarts of beer later, they were, if not happy, somewhat more relaxed.
“Who are those men?” Fanny whispered to me, coming back to the kitchen after another beer delivery. “They don’t theem—seem to like Mr. Fraser much.”
“Friends of Captain Cunningham,” I said. “I think the captain will be joining them shortly. Do we have anything they can eat? Men are always easier to handle if their stomachs are full.”
“That’s true,” she said, nodding sagely. “A first-rate brothel hath—has a good cook. But you can’t let a man eat too much if you want him to do anything. Mother Abbott thaid if a man’s belly sticks out so far he can’t see his cock, you’d best give him enough wine that he falls asleep and then tell him he had a good time when he wakes up. He—”
“How about the game pie Mrs. Chisholm sent down?” I interrupted hastily. “Is there any of that left?” I’d told Fanny she could tell me anything, and I’d meant it, but I was occasionally still disconcerted by the vivid detail of her recollections.
The captain definitely had a lean and hungry look.
“Such men are dangerous,” I murmured, watching as he strode into the parlor, Young Ian at his heels like a genial wolf.
Then I caught a glimpse of Jamie, rising to greet Cunningham, and thought, And he’s not the only one …