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.
“A handful of soggy fibers?” Roger guessed.
“Pretty much. So—” She’d brought in a box of her paper-making supplies and now took from this a large cloth bag, bulging with …
“Is that cotton?” Fanny asked, fascinated by the fuzzy white blobs that poked out of the small heap of fabric scraps and something that looked—to Roger’s jaundiced eye—like handfuls of scraggy blond hair pulled out of someone’s head.
“Some of it. And flax that’s been hatcheled. And some paper scraps and bits of decayed rag. So we start with a handful of fibers, finely ground.” She laid her paper-making screen on the table, took up a small corked bottle, and carefully spread a line of what looked like carpet sweepings across the middle of the screen. “That’s going to be my patch. Now we lay the pieces down on top of that …”
One by one, Roger handed her the halves of the drawing and she carefully fitted the torn edges as closely together as she could manage.
“It’s a good thing it was drawn with a graphite pencil,” she observed. “Ink or charcoal or watercolor, and we’d be out of luck. As it is …” She’d brought down something that looked like a photographer’s finishing tray as welclass="underline" a shallow box with raised sides, the seams sealed with pitch. Holding her breath, she lifted the paper screen and slowly lowered it into the tray.
“Water, please, nurse,” she murmured, reaching out a hand toward the big mulberry-colored pitcher that sat on the sideboard, always full of clean water. Roger edged off the bench—leaving a small puddle on the floor, he saw—and fetched it.
She sprinkled water carefully over the drawing until it was quite saturated—“So it will stick to the screen and not float,” she explained—and then poured more water into the tray, letting it rise until it just covered the sheet of paper.
“All right.” She set down the heavy pitcher with a small sigh of relief. “Now we let it soak for … oh, twenty-four hours should be plenty. That will dissolve the fiber of the drawing paper, which will then bond with the fiber of the patch—while not disturbing the lines of the drawing.” Roger saw her cross her fingers briefly behind her back. She smiled at Fanny.
“So then we press it, dry it, and we’ll essentially have a new sheet of paper—but with your drawing just like it is.”
Fanny had been watching the pouring with the hypnotized gaze of a frozen rabbit watching a fox, but with Brianna’s words, she looked up and let her breath out in a huge “Ohhhhh!”
“Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!” She pressed her palms against her cheeks, gazing at the drawing as though it had suddenly come to life.
And Roger had the sudden feeling that it had. To this point, he’d seen it purely as something Fanny valued, without really noticing the drawing itself. Now he saw it.
Whoever had drawn it had been a talented artist—but the girl on the page had been something special in herself. Beautiful, yes, but with a sense of … what? Vitality, attraction—but she also gave off an air of challenge, he thought. And while the beautiful mouth and sidelong glance offered a seductive half smile, they communicated also determination—and a sense of simmering rage that raised the hairs on Roger’s nape.
He remembered that this girl had killed a man with her own hands, and with premeditation.
To save her little sister from a fate she knew too well.
He wondered briefly whether the man who had drawn her that night at the brothel had then taken her, knowing what he was buying, and perhaps relishing it. He instantly suppressed the visions conjured up by the thought, though there was no suppressing the thought itself.
Fanny was standing next to him, still looking at the last physical remnant of her sister. He put an arm around her shoulders, gently, and thought to the girl whose face glimmered in the water, her memory surviving wreck and dissolution, Don’t worry. We’ll see that she’s safe, no matter what. I promise you.
49
Your Friend, Always
From Brianna Fraser MacKenzie (Mrs.)
Fraser’s Ridge, North Carolina
To Lord John Grey, c/o Harold, Duke of Pardloe, Colonel of His Majesty’s Forty-sixth Regiment of Foot, Savannah, Georgia
Dear Lord John—
I received your very gracious offer of a commission to paint the portrait of Mrs. Brumby, and I accept with great pleasure!
Thanks also for your offer of safe-conduct, which I also accept with gratitude for your thoughtfulness, as my husband and children will accompany me. My husband has important business to conduct in Charles Town, so we’ll proceed there first—though briefly!—and then come on to Savannah, reaching you, God willing and the creek don’t rise, as people say hereabouts (I’m told the saying was originally to do with the Creek tribe of Indians, who were rather belligerent, and who could blame them, but given the weather in the mountains, I think water is a much more likely impediment to travel), before the end of September.
That being the case, perhaps it would expedite matters if you were to send whatever we require in the way of a safe-conduct in care of Mr. William Davies of Charlotte, North Carolina. We’ll pass through Charlotte on our way to Charles Town (which, as I’m sure you know, is presently in the hands of the Americans). Mr. Davies is a friend of my father’s and will keep the documents safely for our arrival.
I can’t wait to see you again!
Your Friend, Always—