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.
He nodded, his eyes fixed on my mouth as though reading my lips.
“Well, I went round the corner, and there they were.”
“Who?”
“The White Sow herself, with what I assume were two of her daughters or granddaughters … the others weren’t white, but they had to be related to her because all three of them were the same size—immense.” Your average wild hog stood about three foot at the shoulder and weighed two or three hundred pounds. The White Sow, who was not a wild hog herself but the product of a domestic porcine line bred for poundage, was a good deal older, greedier, and more ferocious than the average, and while I wasn’t as good as Jamie at estimating the weight of livestock, I would have clocked her at six hundred pounds without a moment’s hesitation. Her descendants weren’t much smaller.
The sense of placid malignity had frozen me in place, and my skin rippled into instant gooseflesh at the memory of those small dark-red intelligent eyes, fixed on me from the pale bulk in the shadows of the cave.
“Did she go after ye?” Jamie ran a concerned hand over the curve of my shoulder, feeling the goose bumps. I shook my head.
“I thought she would. Every second I was there, and every second it took me to inch my way back into the light and out of the cave, I thought she was going to heave to her feet—they were all sort of … reclining in the matted straw—and run me down, but they just … looked at me.” I swallowed, and a new wave of horripilation ran down my arms.
“Anyway,” I finished, nudging closer to his warmth, “they didn’t eat me. Maybe she remembers that I used to feed her scraps—but I don’t know that she feels that kindly toward you.”
“I’ll take my rifle when I go up there,” he promised. “If I see them, we’ll have meat for the winter.”
“You bloody be careful,” I said, and nipped the flesh of his shoulder. “I don’t think you could get all three before one of them gets you. And I rather think that killing the White Sow might be bad luck.”
“Bah,” he said comfortably, and rolled over, pinning me to the mattress with a whoosh of down feathers. He lowered his head and nibbled my earlobe, making me squirm and muffle a shriek.
“Tell me about the bees,” he said, breathing warmly into my ear. “It may settle ye enough to fix your mind where it belongs, instead of on pigs.”
“You asked,” I said, with dignity, refusing to address the question of where my mind belonged. “As for the bees … I thought they’d hibernate, but Myers says they don’t, though they do stay inside their hives when it gets cold. But there are still late flowers in the garden, and they’re still at work. Just before I came down tonight—it was starting to get dark—I found two of them, curled up together in the cup of a hollyhock, covered in pollen and holding each other’s feet.”
“Were they dead?”
“No.” He’d moved off me but was still imminent. His hair was loose, soft and tumbled, sparking red and silver in the firelight, and I brushed it behind his ear. “I thought they were, the first time I saw it, but I’ve seen it several times since, and they’re just sleeping in the flowers. They wake up when the sun warms them and fly off.
“I don’t know whether it’s something like camping out for them, or whether they just get too tired to make their way back to the hive or are caught out by the dark and lie down where they can,” I added. “You mostly see single bees doing it, though. Seeing two of them together like that … it was very sweet.”
“Sweet,” he echoed, and threading his fingers through mine kissed me gently, tasting of smoke and beer and bread with honey.
“Do you know why they’re called hollyhocks?”
“No, but I suppose ye’re going to tell me.” One big hand ran down the side of my neck and delicately grasped my nipple. I returned the favor, enjoying the rough feel of the hairs around his.
“The Crusaders brought it back to England, because you can make a salve of its root that’s particularly good for an injury to a horse’s hocks. Apparently crusading is hard on the hocks.”
“Mmm … I wouldna doubt it.”
“So,” I whispered, flicking my thumbnail lightly, “‘Holly’ is an old spelling of ‘Holy’—for the ‘Holy Land’?”
“Mmphm …”
“And ‘hock’—well, for ‘hocks.’ What do you think of that?”
A subterranean quiver rippled through his body, and he lay down on top of me and eased both hands under my hips. His breath tickled warmly in my ear.
“I think I should like to sleep in a flower wi’ you, Sassenach, holding your feet.”
I reached to put out the candle and my mind settled where it belonged, in the warm heart of the firelit darkness.
I SLEPT THE sleep of the gardener, physical exhaustion leavened by tranquility, and dreamed—little wonder—of weeds. I was yanking them out of the ground at the foot of a vast bank of blooming pea vines, tossing the weeds over my shoulder and hearing them plink on the ground like coins, then realizing that it was raining …
I rose slowly out of my dream of slugs and rain-wet vegetables to realize that Jamie had got up and was using the tin chamber pot, having withdrawn to a polite distance by the window to do so. Knowing that his grandfather, the Old Fox, had suffered from an enlarged prostate, I was inclined to listen—as tactfully as possible—in case of any adverse indications, but the sound was reassuringly strong and well defined, and I closed my eyes and pretended to have just wakened when he crawled back into bed.
“Mm?” I said, and patted his arm. He lay down, sighing, and took my hand.
“What’s today?” he said. “Or what will it be, when the sun comes up?”
“What is—oh, you mean what’s the date? It’s October the seventh. I’m sure, because I wrote down October sixth in my black book when I did my notes after supper. Why?”
“A few more days, then. It’ll be the eleventh.”
“What happens on the eleventh?”
“According to your damned first husband, that’s when the Americans will lift their siege on Savannah.” He made a low, disgruntled noise in the back of his throat. “I should never have let Brianna go!”
I paused for a minute before answering, not sure of the ground.
“The city won’t be invaded,” I said, though I was uneasy, too. If we believe Frank’s book, and I suppose we must … “And you couldn’t have stopped her, you know.”
“I could,” he said stubbornly. “Or,” he added more fairly, “I could have stopped Roger Mac. And she wouldna go without him. And now the whole family’s there, God damn it.” He moved his legs restlessly, rustling under the covers.
“Yes,” I said, taking a deep breath. “They are. Including William.”
He stopped fidgeting abruptly and breathed through his nose for a bit.
“Aye,” he said at last, reluctantly. “I shouldna have done it, though—sent Bree into danger. Not even for William’s sake.”
A throaty call from a sleepy dove in the trees outside announced that the dawn was coming. No point in trying to soothe Jamie back to sleep, even if it was possible, and it wasn’t. His uneasiness was catching. I knew he was only second-guessing himself; all this had been discussed beforehand. Roger and Bree knew when the battle would happen—and that the city would not be taken. Even so, they’d have had time enough to leave the city, if things seemed too dangerous. And … despite his current edginess, Jamie did, in fact, trust John Grey to see them safe—or as safe as anyone could be, in a time like this.