Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone

“Hey!” Brianna grabbed his arm, startling him back into wakefulness. By reflex, he hauled back on the reins and the horses stopped, snorting, their sides slicked with sweat.

“You’d be dead on your feet, if you were standing up,” she said, smiling. “You crawl in back with Mandy for a while. I’ll drive.”

“Nah, I’m fine.” He resisted her attempt to take the reins from him, but in the process he lost control of his face and yawned so widely that his ears roared with the sound of distant surf and his eyes watered.

“Go,” she said, gathering the reins up neatly and twitching them across the horses’ backs, clicking her tongue before he could argue. “I’m fine. Really,” she added more softly, looking at him.

“Aye. Well … maybe just for a bit.” He couldn’t bring himself to leave her alone on the bench, though, and groped under it for the big canteen. He splashed water into his face, drank a little, and put the plug back in, feeling slightly more alert.

“What else have ye got in your magic bag?” he asked, having spotted the canvas rucksack under the bench next to the canteen. “Besides your tea?”

“Some of my small tools,” she replied, glancing at the bag. “And a good thing, too. A few books—presents, and a few toys for Mandy, and the Grinch book I made for her. She wanted to bring Green Eggs and Ham, but that wouldn’t do.”

Roger smiled at the thought of the Brumbys and their society friends spotting the big bright-orange book. Bree was slowly working on handmade approximations of some of the other Dr. Seuss books, with her own whimsical versions of the drawings and as much of the original verse as she and Claire could remember between them. They were by no means as eye-catching as the real thing, but also much less likely to cause more than a smile or a puzzled frown, should anyone look through one.

“And what if you meet a printer in Savannah, who catches sight of it and wants to publish the book?” he asked, trying to sound no more than mildly curious. He’d almost got over worrying about exposing bits of future culture to the eighteenth century, but it still gave him an uneasy feeling at the back of his neck, as though the Time Police might be lying in wait to spot Horton Hears a Who! and denounce them. To whom? he wondered.

“I guess it would depend how much he offered me,” she said lightly. She felt his resistance, though, and transferred the reins to her left hand in order to pat his.

“Historical friction,” she said. “There are all kinds of things—ideas, machines, tools, whatever—that were—are, I mean—discovered more than once. Mama said the hypodermic needle was independently invented by at least three different people, all around the same time, in different countries. But other things are invented or discovered and they just … sit. No one uses them. Or they’re lost, and then found again. For years—centuries, sometimes—until something happens, and suddenly it’s the right time, and whatever it is comes suddenly into its own, and spreads, and it’s common knowledge.

“Besides,” she added practically, nudging the bag with her foot, “what harm could it do to loose a bastardized version of The Cat in the Hat on the eighteenth century?”

He laughed in spite of his uneasiness.

“Nobody would print that one. A story showing children being deliberately disobedient to their mother? And not suffering Dire Consequences for doing it?”

“Like I said. Not the right time for a book like that,” she said. “It wouldn’t … stick.”

She’d got over the emotional breakdown altogether now—or at least that’s what she looked like. Long red hair spilling loose down her back, face animated but not troubled, her eyes on the road and the horses’ bobbing heads.

“And then I have Jane,” she said, nodding at the bag and lowering her voice. “Speaking of dire consequences, poor girl.”

“Ja—oh, Fanny’s sister?”

“I mended the drawing, but I promised Fanny that I’d paint Jane, too,” Bree said, and frowned a little. “Make her more permanent. And Lord John says Mr. Brumby is providing me with the best painting supplies that money and a solid Tory reputation can buy in Savannah. I couldn’t persuade Fanny to let me take her drawing, but she did let me copy it so I’d have something to work from.”

“Poor girl. Girls, I should say.” Claire had told Brianna, after the uproar over Fanny’s getting her monthly, what had happened to Jane, and Bree had told him.

“Yes. And poor Willie, too. I don’t know if he was in love with Jane or just felt responsible for her, but Mama said he showed up at her funeral in Savannah, looking awful, with that huge horse. He gave Da the horse, for Fanny—he’d already given Fanny to him, to take care of—and then he just … left. They haven’t heard anything about him since.”

Roger nodded, but there wasn’t much to say. He’d met William, Ninth Earl of Ellesmere, once, several years before, for roughly three minutes, on a quay in Wilmington. A teenager then, tall and thin as a rail—and with a striking resemblance to Bree, though he was dark-haired—but with a lot more confidence and bearing than he’d have expected from someone that age. He supposed that was one of the perquisites of being born (at least theoretically) to the hereditary aristocracy. You really did think the world—or a good part of it—belonged to you.