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.
ROGER RETURNED TO THE printshop to find both his wife and Marsali covered with ink and enmeshed in a cobweb of drying pages hung from the crisscrossing lines strung across the back of the shop. Brianna made to remove her inky apron in order to come and help him dress, but he waved her back and climbed the ladder to the loft, where he found his suit—somewhat worn at the edges and with the corner of the pocket darned, but definitely black—and a clean, starched, brand-new white neckcloth hanging from a hook under the owl-slits.
He dressed slowly and carefully, listening to the women’s talk and laughter down below, and the high-pitched echo of the three little girls, who were playing in the kitchen whilst keeping an eye on their baby brothers. It gave him a sense of warmth and tenderness, and a sudden longing for a home of their own. When we get back to the Ridge, he thought, maybe …
It had suited everyone’s convenience to live together in the New House after their return, and it was a lot easier to take care of kids when there were older children and other adults around to help—but maybe once he was ordained … And at the thought, he superstitiously crossed his fingers, then laughed to himself.
But it might be best. A large part of what he’d be doing would be talking to people, and while he still meant to go round house-visiting on the Ridge, he should have a place, maybe, with a wee room for a study, where he could talk to folk in private, and where he could keep records of births and marriages and deaths …
Thinking about the distant future lessened his apprehension of the more immediate future, and he came down the ladder briskly, just as the bell of a nearby church struck two.
“You’re early,” Brianna observed, pausing to wipe sweat from her forehead. “You look great, though!”
“Aye, ye do,” Marsali chimed in. “Just like a minister—only better-looking. All the Presbyterian ministers I know are auld and crabbit and smell like camphor.”
“They do?” Roger asked, amused. “How many do you know?”
“Well, one,” she admitted. “And he’s ninety-seven. But still—”
“Don’t get too close. You don’t have another clean shirt.” But Brianna still came within touching distance, and hands safely crossed behind her back, leaned far out to kiss him.
“Good luck,” she said, and smiled into his eyes. “It will be fine.”
“Aye. Thanks,” he said, meaning it, and smiled back. “I—think I’ll just sit outside for a bit. Gather my thoughts.”
“That’s good,” Marsali said approvingly. “If ye went walkin’ about for an hour, ye’d be wringing wet by the time ye got there.”
HE’D BEEN SITTING on one of the two benches outside—the one under the patchy shade of a palmetto—for a quarter of an hour, trying hard not to think too much, when Jem came wandering along the street, idly poking at things with the stick in his hand.
When he saw his father, though, he dropped the stick and came to sit beside him, swinging his feet. They sat together for a bit, just listening to the buzz of cicadas and the shouts of fishmongers from a distant pier.
“Dad,” Jem said, diffident.
“Aye?”
“Will you be different? After you get ordained?” Jem looked up at this, worry pinching the corners of his wide, soft mouth. God, he looks like Bree.
“No, mate,” Roger said. “I’ll always be your dad, no matter what. And I’ll still be just me,” he added, as an afterthought.
“Oh. Well, I didn’t think ye’d stop, exactly …” A smile touched Jem’s face like a stray sunbeam. “It’s only … what’s different? Because if nothing’s different—why do you want to do it? Why is it important?”
“Ah.” Roger leaned back a little, hands on his knees. The truth was that he rather expected to be different in some indefinable way, even though he also knew with certainty that he’d be the same.
“Well,” he said slowly, “part of it is that it’s formal. You ken Mairi and Archie MacLean back home at the Ridge, aye?”
“Aye.” Jem was eyeing him dubiously, wondering if this was going to make sense. Roger wondered that, too, but it was a legitimate question—and one that he thought might need answering more than once.
“Well, see, we had their wedding at Easter, but they came to it with their wee son, who was born in the autumn of last year. So they’d been living as man and wife for more than a year, even though they weren’t married.”
“Were they no handfast?” Jem’s brow wrinkled, trying to recollect.
“Aye, they were. That’s sort of my point. They made a contract with each other when they became handfast. Ye understand contracts?”
“Oh, aye. Grandda showed me the land deed the old governor gave him for the Ridge, and he explained why that was a contract. Two … er … parties? I think that’s what he said. The parties promise each other something and sign their names to it.”
“Ye’ve got it.” Roger smiled and was happy to get a smile back in return. “So then. Mairi and Archie had that contract, though it wasn’t written down, and what it said—have ye seen anyone get handfast? No? Well, when two people are handfast, they promise to live together as man and wife for a year and a day, and to—do the things a man and wife do, in the way of taking care of each other. And that’s a contract between them. But … when the year and a day are up, then they can decide if they want to go on living as man and wife or if they can’t abide each other and want to go their separate ways.
“So if they want to stay with each other … they do, but if there’s a minister at hand to marry them, they do that, and it’s the same sort of contract, but more … detailed … and it’s permanent. They promise to stay married.”
“Oh, is that what that means, ‘’til death us do part’?”
“Exactly.”
Jem was silent for a moment, turning this over in his mind. In the distance, a church bell rang twice and then was silent: the half-hour bell.
“So ye’ve been handfast to the Presbyterians and now ye’re going to marry them?” Jem asked, frowning a little. “Will Mam not mind?”
“No, she doesn’t,” Roger assured him, hoping it was true.
Another example occurred to him.
“Ye’ve seen your grandda ride out with his men now and then, aye?”
“Oh, aye!” Jem’s eyes grew bright at the recollection. “He says I can go with them when I’m thirteen!”
Roger swallowed his automatic “the hell you will,” and cleared his throat instead. Jamie Fraser had gone on his first cattle raid at the age of eight; in his view of life, as long as the boy’s feet reached the stirrups, why shouldn’t a thirteen-year-old be capable of keeping public order, socializing with Indians, and facing down Loyalist militias?
He’s got to learn sometime, he could hear Jamie saying, with that mild tone that belied the stubborn conviction behind the words. Better early than too late.
“Mmphm. Well. Ye’ve seen when they ride out, your grandda lifts his sword or his rifle as the signal to start?”
Jem nodded enthusiastically, and Roger was obliged to admit that seeing Jamie do that sent a small thrill down his own spine.
“Well, see, that’s the signal that the men are to follow him and go where he leads them. If they come to a place where they need to go in a certain direction, quickly, he’ll draw his sword and point it in the way they should go, so they can all follow at once and not get lost.
“He’s still just who he is—your grandda, and your mam’s father, and a good man—but he’s also got to be a leader, and when he does that, he wears his leather waistcoat and he has his sword in his hand, so everyone knows he’s the leader. He doesna have to stop and explain it to anybody.”