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.
When a tray of pastries with a decanter of iced negus had been delivered, he asked the butler to pour out a glass for each of them and then sat down facing them. His eyes flicked over Roger, but all his attention was for Fergus.
“I said to you on a previous occasion, monsieur, that I wished to acquaint you with the facts of your birth. These are … somewhat dramatic, and I am afraid that you may find some of them distressing. I apologize.”
“Tais-toi,” Fergus said roughly. Roger didn’t understand all of what he said next, but it seemed to be an invitation to Beauchamp to shit something or other—possibly the truth?—out of his backside.
Beauchamp blinked, but sat back, took a sip of wine, and patted his lips.
“You are the son of le Comte Saint Germain,” he said, and paused, as though expecting a reaction. Fergus just stared at him. Roger felt a small rivulet of sweat run down the seam of his back like water from a melting ice cube.
“And your mother’s name was Amélie Élise LeVigne Beauchamp.” Roger heard Fergus’s sudden intake of breath.
“You know that name?” Beauchamp sounded surprised but eager. He leaned forward, his face intent, nacreous in the lamplight.
“J’ai connu une jeune fille de ce nom Amélie,” Fergus said. “Mais elle est morte.”
THERE WAS A moment’s silence, broken only by the distant, bustling hum of the house’s domestic staff.
“She is dead.” Beauchamp’s voice was gentle, but Fergus jerked a little, as though stung by a wasp. Beauchamp drew a long, careful breath, then leaned forward.
“You knew her, you said.”
Fergus nodded, once, a jerky movement quite unlike him.
“I knew her by name. I did not know she was my mother.” He caught Roger’s look of surprise from the corner of his eye and turned to face him, turning a shoulder to Beauchamp, the bringer of unwelcome news.
“There are many children born in a brothel, mon frère, despite unceasing attempts to prevent them. Those pretty enough to be salable within a few years are kept.”
“And the others?” Roger asked, not wanting to hear the answer.
“I was pretty enough,” Fergus replied tersely. “And by the time I did not bruise easily, I could take care of myself on the streets.” Looking down, Roger could see that the toes of Fergus’s shoes were dug hard into the carpet.
“Because there are children, there are whores with milk. Those who had—lost a child—would sometimes nurse other bébés. If a whore was called to attend a customer and her child was hungry, she would hand him to another jeune fille. The little ones called any whore ‘Maman,’” he said quietly, looking down at his feet. “Anyone who would feed them.”
He seemed indisposed to say anything else. Roger cleared his throat, and Beauchamp looked at him as though surprised to find him still there.
“How—and when—did Amélie Beauchamp die?” Roger asked politely.
“During an outbreak of the morbid sore throat,” Beauchamp said, in the same tone. “I—we—don’t know exactly when.”
“I see.” Roger glanced at Fergus, who was still staring at the branching pattern of the figured carpet, saying nothing. “And, um, Monsieur le Comte?”
Percival Beauchamp seemed to relax a little at this question.
“We don’t know that, either. Monsieur le Comte has often disappeared from Paris for varying lengths of time: sometimes days, sometimes months—now and then for a year or more, with no hint as to where he has been. But the last time he was seen was more than twenty years ago, and the circumstances of his disappearance so remarkable that the probability that he really is dead this time is sufficient that a magistrate would undoubtedly declare him to be defunct, should a petition to that effect to be filed by his heir.”
Damp with sweat as his hair was, Roger still felt it rise on his neck. Probably so had Fergus, who looked up sharply at this news.
“Unless my understanding of the law in France has changed of late, a bastard cannot inherit property. Or when you say ‘heir,’ are you talking of someone else?”
Beauchamp smiled at him, an evidently genuine smile of happiness, and, picking up a small silver bell from the tray of refreshments, rang it. Within moments, the door opened, letting in a welcome draft of air and light from the hallway, as well as a tall gentleman in a fine gray suit—but a suit of English cut, not French. Roger thought he must be a lawyer; he looked the part, with a leather folder tucked beneath one arm.
“Mr. Beauchamp,” he said, with a nod toward Percival. “And you, sir, must be Claudel, if I may use your original name.”
“You may not, sir.” Fergus was sitting bolt-upright and was getting his feet under him, clearly meaning to walk out. Roger thought that was likely a good idea and began to rise himself, only to be stopped by the newcomer, who held out a quelling hand, and with the other laid down his folder and opened it.
There was only one document inside, old, from its stained and yellowed appearance. It bore a large red-wax seal, though, and multiple signatures, signed with such flourishes that it looked as though a tiny octopus had dipped its legs in ink and walked across the page.
At the top of the document, however, the writing—in French—was clear and clerkish.
Contract of Marriage
Made this Day, the Fourteenth of August, Anno Domini Seventeen-Thirty-Five, between Amélie Élise LeVigne Beauchamp, Spinster, and Leopold George Simòn Gervase Racokzì, le Comte St. Germain
“You aren’t a bastard,” Percival Beauchamp said, smiling warmly at Fergus. “Allow me to congratulate you, sir.”
FERGUS KNITTED HIS brows, staring at the document, then flicked a sideways glance at Roger. Roger made a small hem noise in his throat, signifying willingness to follow any lead Fergus chose, but otherwise remained still. He regarded the iced negus; the decanter and glasses were filmed with condensation, and water droplets were beginning to slide down the curved glass. It would have gone down a treat in this steam bath.
Beauchamp and the lawyer were each holding a glass of the cold sugared port, eyes fixed expectantly on Fergus, ready to toast their revelation.
Fergus straightened up and got his feet under him.
“I may or may not be a bastard, gentlemen, but I am most certainly not a child.”
Roger thought that was a good exit line, and also got his feet under him, but Fergus didn’t stand up. He leaned forward and deliberately picked up a glass of the negus, which he passed under his nose with the air of a king compelled to inspect a chamber pot.
“Here,” he said to Beauchamp, who was watching this with his mouth slightly open. “Exchange glasses with me, s’il vous plaît.” Despite the overt politeness, it wasn’t a request, and Beauchamp, eyebrows nearly touching his hairline, obliged. Fergus silently indicated that Roger should likewise exchange drinks with the lawyer and this was done, Roger wondering—not for the first time—What the hell?
Fergus sat back in his chair, relaxed, and lifted his glass.
“To honesty, gentlemen, and honor among thieves.”
Beauchamp and the lawyer exchanged a nonplussed look, but then blinked and murmured the toast, glasses lifted an inch or so. Roger didn’t bother with the toast, but sipped and found the negus as good as he’d thought it might be. It slid beguilingly down his parched throat, cold and warming at the same time.