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.
“Do ye manage the mounting of your men in the same fashion, Mr. Fraser?”
“No, sir. I make fine liquor and trade for horses where I find them.”
Locke blinked, drawing conclusions. Jamie had told Locke where Fraser’s Ridge was.
“Indians?”
Jamie inclined his head an inch.
“A few years back, I was an Indian agent for the Crown in the Southern Department—under Mr. Atkins and then Colonel Johnson. I still have friends among the Cherokee.”
The look of amusement came back into Locke’s weathered face.
“I take it ye don’t number Colonel Johnson among your friends just at present.”
“A friendship requires two parties of like mind, does it not?” When Jamie had resigned his commission, Johnson had threatened to have him hanged as a traitor—and meant it. Jamie chose another fish and bit into it carefully, disentangling small bones with his tongue and laying them neatly on the sheet of greasy, food-spattered newsprint that covered the table in lieu of a cloth. Claire wasn’t with him to deal with things if he choked.
The newspaper was The Impartial Intelligencer, and made him think of Fergus and Marsali. He made an instinctive move to cross himself at the thought of them and Germain, but stilled his hand before it lifted. Locke might well be a Protestant; no need to alienate someone he might need as an ally.
Jamie laid aside the staring head and backbone of the first fish and chose another. Ought he to give Locke one of the Masonic signs? Given his origins and situation, the man was likely Made. Not yet, he decided, watching Locke methodically engulfing his sixth fish. Locke seemed solid enough, but Jamie wanted to talk to a few of the militia colonels presently enrolled in the Rowan County Regiment before deciding whether—and how—to make an alliance. There were the Overmountain men to be considered, too; they were less official, less well armed, and less organized, but a damn sight closer to Fraser’s Ridge than Locke was, and if he needed help in a hurry, they could move quickly.
He put that thought aside. He’d do what he could and pray about the rest.
Locke leaned back, considering as he chewed his last fish slowly.
“Well, I trust we may in time be fast friends, Colonel. Given our commonalities, as you might say.”
Before he could agree to this sentiment, the door opened and Young Ian came in on the wings of a chilly draft that lifted the newspapers on the tables. The Murrays had best be on their way quickly, before the weather turned wet, he thought.
He introduced his nephew to Francis Locke, who glanced at Ian’s tattoos, then at Jamie with an interested cock of the brow.
“I’ve found us lodging wi’ a widow named Hambly, Uncle,” said Ian, ignoring Locke’s examination. “She says her supper will be ready in an hour, should ye care to sit down at her table.”
Locke made a hem sound of warning in his throat.
“The widow’s a kind woman and her house is clean, but she’s no sort of a cook, God bless her. Perhaps ye’d best bring your family to my house for their supper. My land lies outside Salisbury,” he added, seeing Jamie’s brow rise, “but I’ve a small house in town for convenience, and my wife’s a famous gossip. She likes nothin’ better than to meet new folk and turn ’em inside out.”
Jamie met Ian’s eye and they shared a look. “Five to one on my mother,” Ian’s face said, and Jamie agreed with a slight nod.
“We’ll join ye, sir, with great pleasure,” he said formally to Locke, and rose. “We’ll go and fettle the women, and join ye by six o’clock, if that suits?”
MRS. LOCKE WAS a bright-eyed bird of a woman who asked blunt questions with the regularity of a cuckoo clock, but she was a good cook, and Jenny kept her engaged in a discussion of cheese making and the virtues of cow’s milk versus that of goats or sheep, while Rachel fed the bairn and Jamie and Ian asked questions about the regiment, all of which Locke answered readily.
Too far from the Ridge, Ian’s sidelong glance said, and Jamie looked down in agreement.
Locke seemed well organized, but even with the recent excision of Burke County, Rowan County still covered a vast area. If it was a matter of a large battle, with the militia assisting regular troops, like Monmouth, that was one thing: there’d be time to summon a number of Locke’s 167 companies. But for someone to send a rider to Salisbury, appeal to Locke, and from there summon help from surrounding areas to meet an unexpected and imminent threat to the Ridge, a hundred miles away? No.
Ian and Jamie had silently concluded that the Ridge was better off defending itself, and Ian had just raised an eyebrow to ask Jamie whether he meant to tell Locke so when a sound of footsteps came up the front steps and there was a rapid thumping on the door that stopped Mrs. Locke in mid-question.
The caller was a boy of fifteen or so, with the beginnings of a scanty beard creeping along his jaw like a fungus.
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” he said, bowing to Locke. “Constable Jones sent me to say as he’s found a body and will you maybe come and sit on it before it gets any riper?”
“Sit on it?” said Rachel, looking up in surprise.
“Aye, ma’am,” Locke said, getting up from the table. “I’m the county coroner, for my sins. Where’s this body, Josh?”
“In Chris Humphreys’s stable, sir. But ’twas found behind the Oak Tree tavern, to start with. Mrs. Ford wouldn’t let ’em bring it inside the tavern.”
“Oh.” Locke cast a quick look at the landlord, who crossed his arms and lowered his brow. “I suppose our host has similar feelings. I’ll go out to the stable and have a look. Will you wait, Mr. Fraser? Likely I won’t be long about it.”
“I’ll come with ye, if I may.” Jamie rose, making a small gesture indicating that Ian should seize the opportunity to take his leave. Jamie was mildly curious to see the dead man, but his main intent was to have an excuse to break up the party. He could see Rachel at the table, drooping with weariness, Oggy asleep in her lap, and his sister, while still upright, had been radiating waves of impatience in his direction for the last quarter hour.
62
A Stranger’s Face
THE STABLE WAS A respectable shed with four stalls, smelling of horse but presently empty save for a pair of trestles with a sheet of tin roofing laid across them. The body had been placed on this, a handkerchief laid over the face for decency, though it was too cold for flies.
Jamie crossed himself unobtrusively and offered a brief, silent prayer for the stranger’s soul.
“Any sign he was robbed, Mr. Jones?” Locke took out his own handkerchief and a small bottle. He shook several drops from this onto the cloth and pressed it to his nose in a practiced manner. Oil of wintergreen; the sharp smell prickled the hairs inside Jamie’s own nose, and a good thing, too. The stranger was ripe.
“Well, yes,” said the constable, with a touch of impatience. “If empty pockets and a cracked skull are sign enough for you.”
Locke plucked the damp handkerchief off the man’s face with two fingers and set it aside. Jamie felt his wame clench and rise.
The man had a shocking great wound in the side of his head, but that wasn’t what was making the sweat break out in a rush on Jamie’s body.
“You know this man, Mr. Fraser?” Locke had noticed his reaction.
“No, sir,” he said. His lips felt stiff, as though someone had hit him in the mouth. The man was strange to him, but the look of him was not. Not tall, but large, a heavy-boned man who had run to fat, his bloated stomach a great round swelling under his half-buttoned breeches, tapering down to too-small feet that had flattened and spread under the weight they were required to bear and burst the seams of the man’s worn shoes.