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.
The memory of him bellowing at the children was even better. He’d done that before—it was a necessity, children and the great outdoors being what they respectively were—but I’d never heard him do it without his voice breaking, with a follow-up of coughing and throat clearing. McEwan had said that it was a small improvement, and that it took time for healing.
Had I actually done anything to help?
I looked critically at the palm of my hand, but it looked much as usuaclass="underline" a half-healed paper cut on the middle finger, stains from picking blackberries, and a burst blister on my thumb, from snatching a spider full of bacon that had caught fire out of the hearth, without a pot holder to shield my hand. Not a sign of any blue light, certainly.
“Wassat, Grannie?” Amanda leaned off the table to look at my upturned hand.
“What’s what? That black splotch? I think it’s ink; I was writing up my casebook yesterday. Kirsty Wilson’s rash.” I’d thought at first the rash was just poison sumac, but it was hanging on in a rather worrying fashion …. No fever, though … perhaps it was hives? Or some kind of atypical psoriasis?
“No, dat.” Mandy poked a wet, chubby finger at the heel of my hand. “Issa letter!” She twisted her head halfway round to look closer, black curls tickling across my arm. “Letter ‘J’!” she announced triumphantly. “‘J’ is for Jemmy! I hate Jemmy,” she added, frowning.
“Er …” I said, completely nonplussed. It was the letter “J.” The scar had faded to a thin white line but was still clear if the light struck right. The scar Jamie had given me, when I’d left him at Culloden. Left him to die, hurling myself through the stones to save his unborn, unknown child. Our child. And if I hadn’t?
I looked at Mandy, sherry-eyed and black-curled and perfect as a tiny spring apple. Heard Jem outside, now giggling with his father. It had cost us twenty years apart—years of heartbreak, pain, and danger. It had been worth it.
“It’s for Grandda’s name. ‘J’ for Jamie,” I said to Amanda, who nodded as though that made perfect sense, clutching a soggy Esmeralda to her chest. I touched her glowing cheek and imagined for an instant that my fingers might be tinged with blue, though they weren’t.
“Mandy,” I said, on impulse. “What color is my hair?”
“When your hair is white, you’ll come into your full power.” An old Tuscarora wisewoman named Nayawenne had said that to me, years ago—along with a lot of other disturbing things.
Mandy stared intently at me for a moment, then said definitely, “Brindle.”
“What? Where did you learn that word, for heaven’s sake?”
“Uncle Joe. He says ’at’s what color Badger is.”
“Who’s Badger?”
“Auntie Gail’s doggy.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Not yet, then. All right, sweetheart, let’s go and hang Esmeralda out to dry.”
6
Home Is the Hunter, Home from the Hill
JAMIE AND BRIANNA CAME back in late afternoon, with two brace of squirrels, fourteen doves, and a large piece of stained and tattered canvas that, unwrapped, revealed something that looked like the remnants of a particularly grisly murder.
“Supper?” I asked, gingerly poking at a shattered bone sticking out of the mass of hair and slick flesh. The smell was iron-raw and butcherous, with a rank note that seemed familiar, but decay hadn’t yet set in to any noticeable degree.
“Aye, if ye can manage, Sassenach.” Jamie came and peered down at the bloody shambles, frowning a little. “I’ll tidy it up for ye. I need a bit o’ whisky first, though.”
Given the bloodstains on his shirt and breeks, I hadn’t noticed the equally stained rag tied round his leg, but now saw that he was limping. Raising a brow, I went to the large basket of food, small tools, and minor medical supplies that I lugged up to the house site every morning.
“From what’s left of it, I presume that is—or was—a deer. Did you actually tear it apart with your bare hands?”
“No, but the bear did,” Bree said, straight-faced. She exchanged complicit glances with her father, who hummed in his throat.
“Bear,” I said, and took a deep breath. I gestured at his shirt. “Right. How much of that blood is yours?”
“No much,” he said tranquilly, sitting down on the Big Log. “Whisky?”
I looked sharply at Brianna, but she seemed to be intact. Filthy, and with green-gray bird droppings streaked down her shirt, but intact. Her face glowed with sun and happiness, and I smiled.
“There’s whisky in the tin canteen hanging over there,” I said, nodding toward the big spruce at the far side of the clearing. “Do you want to fetch it for your father while I see what’s left of his leg?”
“Sure. Where are Mandy and Jem?”
“When last seen, they were playing by the creek with Aidan and his brothers. Don’t worry,” I added, seeing her lower lip suck suddenly in. “It’s very shallow there, and Fanny said she’d go and keep an eye on Mandy while she’s collecting leeches. Fanny’s very dependable.”
“Mm-hmm.” Bree still looked dubious, but I could see her fighting down her maternal impulse to go scoop Mandy out of the creek immediately. “I know I met her last night, but I’m not sure I remember Fanny. Where does she live?”
“With us,” Jamie said matter-of-factly. “Ow!”
“Hold still,” I said, spreading the puncture wound in his leg open with two fingers while I poured saline solution into it. “You don’t want to die of tetanus, do you?”
“And what would ye do if I said yes, Sassenach?”
“The same thing I’m doing right now. I don’t care if you want to or not; I’m not having it.”
“Well, why did ye ask me, then?” He leaned back on his palms, both legs stretched out, and looked up at Bree. “Fanny’s a wee orphan lass. Your brother took her under his protection.”
Bree’s face went almost comically blank. “My brother. Willie?” she asked, tentative.
“Unless your mother kens otherwise, he’s the only brother ye’ve got,” Jamie assured her. “Aye, William. Jesus, Sassenach, ye’re worse than the bear!”
He closed his eyes, whether to avoid looking at what I was doing to his leg—enlarging and debriding the wound with a lancet; the injury wasn’t serious in itself, but the puncture wound in his calf was deep, and I was in fact not being rhetorical about the risk of tetanus—or to give Bree a moment to recover her countenance.
She looked at him, head cocked to one side.
“So,” she said slowly. “That means … he knows that you’re his father?”
Jamie grimaced, not opening his eyes.
“He does.”
“Not that happy about it?” One side of her mouth curled up, but both her eyes and her voice were sympathetic.
“Probably not.”
“Yet,” I murmured, rinsing blood down his long shinbone. He snorted. Bree made a more feminine version of the same noise and went to fetch the whisky. Jamie heard her go and opened his eyes.
“Are ye not done yet, Sassenach?” I saw the slight vibration of his wrists and realized that he was bracing himself on his palms in order to hide the fact that he was trembling with exhaustion.
“I’m through hurting you,” I assured him. I put my hand next to his on the log as I rose, touching his fingers lightly. “I’ll put a bandage on it, and then you should lie down for a bit with your foot propped up.”
“Don’t fall asleep, Da.” Brianna’s shadow fell over him, and she leaned down to hand him the canteen. “Ian says he’s bringing Rachel and his mother down to have supper with us.” She leaned in farther and kissed him on the forehead.