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.
“Ronnie says the other two barrels were used for salt pork and blood sausage, he thinks. Ye’ll just smell like Sunday dinner in Salem,” his father-in-law said callously. “Is this one ready?”
“Aye.” Roger picked at a splinter in his thumb, watching covertly as Jamie peered into the depths of the barrel. He was rather proud of his work—and work it had been, too: fitting a false second bottom to the barrel, with just enough space for a thin—but rich—layer of gold underneath, and fitting it closely enough that it was unlikely to come loose if someone threw it on the ground.
“Oh, that’s braw!” Still peering inside, Jamie picked the barrel up, weighed it in his hands, and dropped it experimentally. It landed with a solid thud, upright. Jamie looked inside, looked up, and smiled. “Sound as a nut, Roger Mac.”
“Aye, well, Brianna helped me—with the template, I mean. And Tom MacLeod gave her the wood.”
“She didna tell him what for, I hope,” Jamie said, but with no real fear that she might have.
“She said she told him she thought of making a cradle for the Ogilvys.” Young Angus and his wife were expecting their first child, and thus were now the recipients of outgrown baby smocks, spare clouts, dummies, suckling bottles, and any amount of probably unwanted advice.
Jamie nodded in approval, and without further ado poured a pale-green cascade of fragrant sauerkraut into the barrel.
“Ye’ll need to be moving it to and fro, when ye travel,” he said, in answer to Roger’s unspoken thought that Jamie might have waited until the barrel was loaded onto the wagon before adding twenty pounds of fermented cabbage to the weight. “Best to try it whilst ye’re alone, in case anything’s like to come loose, aye?”
Another voluminous splash, and the sauerkraut oscillated gently three inches below the wood scar that showed where the lid would fit.
They stood looking thoughtfully into the aromatic mass, and the same notion occurred to both. He felt Jamie twitch, just as he himself thought that they’d best check to see if the false bottom had come loose under the force of the deluge. Jamie was already reaching for a suitable stick, which he handed Roger.
Roger probed the depths of the barrel, smiling a bit. It always gave him a wee sense of warmth when he suddenly shared an unspoken thought with someone. It happened now and then with Bree, once in a while with Claire—but surprisingly often with Jamie. Perhaps it was just that they’d worked often together, knew each other’s physical ways.
“Right, then. All sound.” Roger threw away the wet stick, picked up the lid and pressed it down into place, banged it tight with a mallet, and they finished the job with a final hoop. Crude, but effective.
Jamie stood back, nodding as he rolled down his shirtsleeves.
“Ken, if there’s the slightest danger, leave the barrels and run for it,” he said. “Ye’ll not have any trouble on the way—bar bandits,” he added as an afterthought. “Lord John’s wee pass should see ye safe through anything else. But when ye get to Charles Town …” He lifted one shoulder, and Roger’s stomach tightened.
Aye, Charles Town. Jamie had written—in a cipher that fascinated Roger—to Fergus, who would have something planned by the time they arrived—but what?
Jamie wasn’t concerned with Charles Town, though.
“See what Fergus has in mind; he’s a daring wee snipe, but he’s a father of five now, so he’s no as reckless as he used to be. But when ye come to Savannah,” he began, but then stopped, frowning. Whatever he was thinking, though, Roger wasn’t divining it.
“There’s a soldier called Francis Marion,” Jamie said abruptly. “A Continental officer. Claire said he’s known in—your time. The Swamp Fox, she said. He’s no called that just now,” he added hastily, “but if ye might have heard of him?”
“I have,” Roger said slowly. “But that name is virtually all I know. Is he in Savannah?”
Jamie nodded, looking easier.
“I had a letter last week, from a man I know. News, aye? And he told about the British garrison in Savannah—I’d asked, since the lass means to go there—and he said that this Marion had mentioned to him that Benjamin Lincoln had it in mind to come down from Charles Town and make a try at taking Savannah. And, ehm …” Jamie’s eyes were firmly fixed on a puddle of sauerkraut juice. Oh, so here was the slippery bit. It came out in a rush.
“Yon Randall said in his book that the Americans would attack Savannah in October—this year,” he added, with a direct look at Roger. “The Americans willna succeed, but Marion will be there.”
“And … you want me to talk to him?” The sweat was drying now, and the wind was cold through his shirt.
“If ye would. The thing is, Marion’s had a great deal of experience wi’ militias.”
“Like you haven’t?” Roger said.
Amusement flickered across Jamie’s face, but he shook his head. “I havena had any experience in lending a militia I’ve gathered and command to the Continental army. Marion’s done that several times, from what the letter says, and I want to ken if he has any sage advice wi’ regard to dealing with … certain officers.”
“Who’s a bastard and who’s not, ye mean? That would be a help—but will ye likely have a choice?”
“All officers are bastards,” Jamie said dryly. “They have to be. So am I. Some ye can trust, though, and some ye can’t. From what I hear, Marion might be one to trust.”
“I see.” And you want a friend in the army before you go to them. A man to help you test the waters before you commit yourself. Or, maybe, to warn you off.
“That’s your choice, isn’t it?” Roger continued. “Whether to commit your—our—militia to fight with the army—or go it alone, like Cleveland and Shelby.”
“They’re not alone,” Jamie corrected. “The Overmountain men have each other to call upon in case of need. But each man keeps his own command. That’s no the way of it in the army.”
Jamie’s hair had come loose on one side; he pulled off the lacing and retied it, squinting his eyes against the wind. There was a late summer storm coming; you could see one approaching for miles, here in the mountains, and the dark clouds were massing fast over Roan Mountain.
“The choice,” Jamie said, still looking at the oncoming weather, “is whether to keep the militia close, to protect the Ridge—so far as that’s possible—or to go out, to seek battle wi’ the British. If we do that, then we can decide how best to go about it.”
Roger contemplated that one for a few moments.
“‘To be, or not to be?’” he asked. “‘Whether ’tis nobler in the mind,’ and all that? Because that’s what you—we—are doing, no? We act or we don’t.” He glanced at Jamie, who was giving a good impression of a coiled spring, and smiled. “Get on wi’ ye; you couldna stay out of a fight if someone paid ye to do it.”
Jamie had the grace to laugh at that, though he looked self-conscious.
“Aye. But there is Captain Cunningham. He might get his guns one of these days, and then what?”
“Well, it wouldna be good,” Roger admitted. “But he’s not going to attack the Ridge and start burning down his neighbors’ cabins, is he? I mean … he lives here.”
“True.”
“So the Americans are going to what—lay siege to Savannah?”
“So he says. Randall. But they willna succeed.” There was something odd in Jamie’s voice every time he said that name. No wonder if there was, but Roger couldn’t say exactly what it was: not doubt, not hate, not—not quite—fear …
“Ye think it’s safe, though, for Bree and the kids to be in Savannah while this is going on?”