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.
“Here, sweetheart.” Roger, who had been looking at the house site with interest, came over and plucked her off the log. “Why don’t you and Jem go gather wood for Grannie? D’ye remember what good firewood looks like?”
“Aye, of course.” Jem looked lofty. “I’ll show her how.”
“I knows how!” Mandy said, glowering at him.
“You have to look out for snakes,” he informed her.
She perked up at once, pique forgotten. “Wanna see a snake!”
“Jem—” Roger began, but Jemmy rolled his eyes.
“I know, Dad,” he said. “If I find a little one, I’ll let her touch it, but not if it’s got rattles or a cotton mouth.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Roger muttered, watching them go off hand in hand.
I swallowed the last of the corn dodgers, licked sugary jam from the corner of my mouth, and gave him a sympathetic look.
“Nobody died the last time you lived here,” I reminded him. He opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again, and I remembered. Mandy nearly had died last time. Which meant that whatever had made them come back now …
“It’s all right,” he said firmly, in answer to what must have been a very apprehensive look on my face. He smiled a little and took me by the elbow, drawing me into the shade of my surgery.
“It’s okay,” he said, and cleared his throat. “We’re okay,” he said, more loudly. “We’re all here and sound. Nothing else matters right now.”
“All right,” I said, only slightly reassured. “I won’t ask.”
He laughed at that, and the dappled light made his worn face young again. “We’ll tell you,” he assured me. “But most of it’s really Bree’s story; you should hear it from her. I wonder what they’re hunting, she and Jamie?”
“Probably each other,” I said, smiling. “Sit down.” I touched his arm, turning him toward the high stool.
“Each other?” He adjusted himself comfortably on the stool, feet tucked back under him.
“Sometimes it’s hard to know what to say, how to talk to each other, when you haven’t seen a person in a long time—especially when it’s a person who’s important to you. It takes a bit of time to feel comfortable again; easier if there’s a job at hand. Let me look at your throat, will you?”
“You don’t feel comfortable talking to me yet?” he asked lightly.
“Oh, yes,” I assured him. “Doctors never have trouble in talking to people. You start by telling them to take off their clothes, and that breaks the ice. By the time you’ve done poking them and peering into their orifices, the conversation is usually fairly animated, if not necessarily relaxed.”
He laughed, but his hand had unconsciously grasped the neckband of his shirt, pulling the fabric together.
“To tell you the truth,” he said, trying to look serious, “we only came for the free babysitting. We haven’t been more than six feet away from the kids in the last four months.” He laughed, then choked a little, and it ended in a small coughing fit.
I laid my hand on his and smiled. He smiled back—though with less certainty than before, and, pulling his hand back, he quickly unbuttoned his shirt and spread the cloth away from his neck. He cleared his throat, hard.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You sound much better than you did last time I saw you.”
Actually, he did, and that rather surprised me. His voice was still broken, rasping, and hoarse—but he spoke with much less effort, and no longer looked as though that effort caused him constant pain.
Roger raised his chin and I reached up carefully, fitting my fingers about his neck, just under his jaw. He’d recently shaved; his skin was cool and slightly damp and I caught a whiff of the shaving soap I made for Jamie, scented with juniper berries; Jamie must have brought it for him early this morning. I was moved by the sense of ceremony in that small gesture—and moved much more by the hope in Roger’s eyes. Hope he tried to hide.
“I met a doctor,” he said gruffly. “In Scotland. Hector McEwan was his name. He was … one of us.”
My fingers stilled and so did my heart.
“A traveler, you mean?”
He nodded. “I need to tell you about him. About what he did. But that can wait a bit.”
“What he did,” I repeated. “To you, you mean?”
“Aye. Though it was what he did to Buck, first …”
I was about to ask what had happened to Buck when he looked suddenly into my eyes, intent.
“Have you ever seen blue light?” he asked. “When you touch somebody in a medical way, I mean? To heal them.”
Gooseflesh rippled up my arms and neck, and I had to take my fingers off his neck, because they were trembling.
“I haven’t done it myself,” I said carefully. “But I saw it. Once.”
I was seeing it again, as vivid in my mind’s eye as it had been in the shadows of my bed at L’Hôpital des Anges, when I had miscarried Faith and been dying of puerperal fever. When Master Raymond had laid his hands on me and I had seen the bones in my arm glow blue through my flesh.
I dropped that vision like a hot plate and realized that Roger was gripping my hand.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.
“I’m not scared,” I said, half truthfully. “Just shocked. I hadn’t thought about it in years.”
“It scared the shit out of me,” he said frankly, and let go of my hand. “After he did what he did to Buck’s heart, I was afraid to talk to him, but I knew I had to. And when I touched him—to stop him, you know; I was following him up a path—he froze. And then he turned round and put his hand on my chest”—his own hand rose, unconsciously, and rested on his chest—“and he said the same thing to me that I’d heard him say to Buck: ‘Cognosco te.’ It means, ‘I know you,’” he clarified, seeing the blank look on my face. “In Latin.”
“He knew—what you were—just by touching you?” The oddest feeling was rippling over my shoulders and down my arms. Not exactly fear … but something like awe.
“Yes. I couldn’t tell about him,” he added hastily. “I didn’t feel anything strange, just then, but I was watching closely, earlier, when he put his hand on Buck’s chest—Buck had some sort of heart attack when we came through the stones—”
“He came with you and Bree and—”
Now Roger made the same helpless gesture.
“No, this was … earlier. Anyway, Buck was in a bad way, and the people who’d taken him in had sent for a doctor, this Hector McEwan. And he laid his hand on Buck’s chest and—and did wee things—and I saw—I really did, Claire, I saw it—a faint blue light come up through his fingers and spread over his hand.”
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.”
He laughed.
“Aye. Exactly. Nobody else could see it, though,” he added, laughter fading out of his face. “Only me.”
I rubbed the palms of my hands slowly together, imagining it.
“Buck,” I said. “I assume he survived? Since you asked if we’d seen him.”
Roger’s face changed at that, a shadow passing behind his eyes.
“He did. Then. But we—separated, after I found Bree and the kids … It’s …”
“A long story,” I finished for him. “Maybe it should wait until Jamie and Bree come back from their hunting. But about this Dr. McEwan—did he tell you anything about—the blue light?” The words felt strange to say, and yet I could envision it; my palms tingled slightly at the thought, and I looked down at them involuntarily. No, still pink.