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.
“Gabriel wasn’t one to stand what he thought of as interference,” Silvia agreed ruefully. “But thee can see their point, surely? I am in fact exactly what they said—a whore.”
Rachel wanted to contradict her on the spot, but having opened her mouth to do so, paused, then took another bite of flaky pastry and gravy.
“Thee had no choice,” she said, after chewing and swallowing.
“Mr. Cadwallader appeared to think I had,” Silvia said, a little tartly. “I should have married again—”
“But thee didn’t know whether thy husband was dead! How could thee marry?”
“—or come to the city and turned my hand to laundry or needlework—”
“Which wouldn’t pay thee enough to feed thyself, let alone thy daughters!”
“Perhaps Friend Cadwallader hasn’t found occasion to discover what the life of a laundress is like,” Silvia said. She finished her pie, and her bony shoulders slumped a little, relaxing in the late-afternoon sun. “I suppose we must look for the light within him and Friend Sharpless, mustn’t we?”
“Yes,” Rachel said reluctantly. “But I may require a few more apples and a bottle of beer before such a search might be effective.”
Silvia laughed, and Rachel’s heart rose to hear it. Silvia Hardman was battered, no doubt of it—but not yet broken.
“Still, it would have been good to be part of a meeting once again,” Silvia said wistfully. “I have not had such company or support in many years.”
Rachel swallowed her last bite and took hold of Silvia’s hand. It was slender, callused, and ill-used, bearing the burns and scars of unrelenting toil and many small household disasters.
“Wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, there am I,” Rachel said, and pointed at Silvia, then herself. “One. Two.”
Silvia smiled, despite herself, and her true nature—kind and humorous—peeped out behind the wariness in her eyes.
“Then thee is my meeting, Rachel. I am blessed.”
IAN CAME BACK from his visit to Elfreth’s Alley in something of a brown study, oblivious to the shouts of dairymaids and beer sellers.
He’d thought he might have to expend considerable time and money in order to get the inhabitants of the brothel to talk, but the mere mention of Jane Pocock’s name had opened floodgates of gossip, and he felt as one might after being washed overboard from a ship and carried ashore in a flurry of foam and sharp debris.
Now he wished he had paid more attention to Fanny’s drawing of her sister.
The loudly stated opinion of Mrs. Abbott, the madam, was that Jane Pocock had been strange, plainly very strange, demented and probably a practitioner of Strange Arts, and how it was that neither she nor any of her girls had been murdered in their beds, she did not know. Ian wondered why a young woman with such skills would have been working as a whore, but didn’t say so, under the circumstances.
It took some time for the talk about the murder of Captain Harkness to die down, but Ian Murray did ken his way around a brothel, and when the flow diminished, he at once ordered two more extortionately priced bottles of champagne.
This altered the air of accommodation to something more focused but less vituperative, and within half an hour, Mrs. Abbott had retreated to her sanctum and the whores had reached their own silent accommodation amongst themselves. He found himself on the red velvet sofa common to such establishments, with Meg on one side and Trixabella on the other.
“Trix was friends with Arabella—Jane, I mean,” Meg explained. Trix nodded, doleful.
“Wish I hadn’t been,” she said. “That girl hadn’t any luck at all, and that kind of thing can brush off on you, you know. What are those things on your face?”
“Can it?” Ian touched his cheekbone. “It’s a Mohawk tattoo.”
“Ooh,” said Trix, with slightly more interest. “Was you captured by Indians?” She giggled at the thought.
“Nay, I went of my own accord,” he said equably.
“Well, me too,” Trix said, with an uptilted chin and a wave of the hand presumably meant to draw his attention to the relatively luxurious nature of her place of employment. “Not Arabella, though. Mrs. Abbott got her and her sister off a sea captain what didn’t have the scratch to pay his bill. Those girls were indentures.”
“Aye? And how long ago was that? Ye canna have been here more than a year or two yourself.” In fact, she looked to have been in the trade for a decade, at least, but minor gallantries were part of the expected pourparlers, and she laughed and batted her eyes at him in a practiced manner.
“Reckon it would have been six—maybe seven—years ago. Time flies when you’re havin’ fun, or so they say.”
“Tempus fugit.” Ian filled her glass and clinked his against it, smiling. She dimpled professionally, drank, and went on.
“Mind, I wasn’t but two years older than Jane …” Bat-bat. “Mrs. Abbott wouldn’t’ve bothered with them, save they were pretty, both of ’em, and Jane was just about old enough to … um … start.”
Ian was counting back; six years ago, Jane would have been about the age Fanny was now. Old enough …
After a few accounts of harrowing initial experiences in the trade, he managed to drag the conversation back to Jane and Fanny.
“Ye said a sea captain sold the girls to Mrs. Abbott. Do either of ye by chance recall his name?”
Meg shook her head.
“I wasn’t here,” she said. “Trix …?” She lifted a brow at her friend, who frowned a little and pressed her lips together.
“Has he come back here—since?” Ian asked, watching her closely. She looked startled.
“I—well … yes. I only saw him twice, mind, and it’s been a long while, so I maybe don’t recall his name for sure.”
Ian sighed, gave her a direct look, and handed her a golden guinea.
“Vaskwez,” she said without hesitation. “Sebastian Vaskwez.”
“Vas—was he a Spaniard?” Ian asked, his mind having smoothly transmuted her rendering to “Sebastiàn Vasquez.”
“I don’t know,” Trix said frankly. “I’ve never had a Spaniard—knowin’-like, I mean—wouldn’t know what they sound like.”
“They all sound the same in bed,” Meg said, giving Ian an eye. Trix gave her friend a withering look.
“He sounded foreign-like, no doubt about that. And no talking through his nose or that gwaw-gwaw sort of thing Frenchies do. I’ve had three Frenchmen,” she explained to Ian, with a small showing of pride. “Was a few of ’em in Philadelphia while the British army was here.”
“When was the last time Vasquez came here?” he asked.
“Two … no, maybe close to three years ago.”
“Did he go with Jane then?” Ian asked.
“No,” Trix said unexpectedly. “He went with me.” She made a face. “He stank of gunpowder—like an artilleryman. He wasn’t one, though; they’ve all got it ground into their skin and their hands are black with it, but he was clean, though he smelled like a fired pistol.”
A thought occurred to Ian—though thinking was becoming difficult. He wasn’t bothered by the fact that his body was taking strong notice of the girls, but arousal seldom did much for the mental faculties.
“Could ye tell if he was still a sea captain?” he asked. Both girls looked blank.
“I mean—did he mention his ship, or maybe say he was taking on crew, anything like that? Did he smell of the sea, or—or—fish?”
That made them both laugh.