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.
“Jamie,” I said softly, at last, and touched his hand lightly. “No place is safe now. Not Savannah. Not Salisbury or Salem. Not here.”
He grew still. Not here.
“No,” he said softly, and squeezed my hand. “Not here.”
82
Jf Special
JAMIE CAME INTO THE surgery with three bottles of whisky cradled in one arm and another gripped with his free hand.
“Oh—presents?” I asked, smiling.
“Well, this one’s yours—or for your patients, at least.” He set the bottle in his hand on my counter, amidst the scatter of dried herbs, mortar and pestle, bottles of oil, and stacks of gauze squares. I dusted crumbs of goldenseal off my hands, picked it up, pulled the cork, and sniffed.
“I take it this is not the Jamie Fraser Special,” I said, coughing a little, and put the cork back in. “It smells like paint remover.”
“I might be offended at that, Sassenach,” he said, smiling. “Save that I didna make it.”
“Who did?”
“Mr. Patton. Husband of Mary Patton, who makes gunpowder in Tennessee County.”
“Really?” I squinted at the bottle, which was squat and square. “Well, I suppose one might need a dram at the end of the day, if you’ve spent said day grinding powder that might blow you to kingdom come at any moment. I do hope nobody there is drinking it to steady their nerves before going to work.”
“The man doesna drink whisky himself,” Jamie informed me, setting the other bottles on the table. “Only beer. Which accounts for the taste of it, I suppose. He’s selling it to the folk who come for his wife’s powder. Or so he says.”
I glanced at him.
“You think he’s selling it to the Indians?” The Powder Branch of the Wautauga River, where the Patton powder mill was located, was very near the Cherokee Treaty Line. Jamie lifted one shoulder briefly.
“If he isn’t now, he soon will be. Unless his wife stops him. She’s a good bit wiser than he is—and most of the money is hers. She buys land with it.”
“Well, that does sound prudent.” I looked at the three bottles stood on my surgery table. “Are those also from Mr. Patton’s still?”
“No,” he said, in a tone of mingled pride and regret. “These are the Jamie Fraser Special—the last three bottles. There are two more small kegs in the cave, and maybe one or two more back in the rocks—but that’s the end, until I can brew again.”
“Oh, dear.” The malting shed had been destroyed by the gang that had attacked the Ridge, and the thought of it made my stomach knot. The still itself had been damaged, too, but Jamie had been putting it in order, in the brief interstices of house building. “And then it still needs to be aged.”
“Ach, dinna fash,” he said, and picking up one of the Special bottles uncorked it and poured a dram into one of my medicine cups, which he handed me. “Enjoy it while ye can, Sassenach.”
I did, though my enjoyment of the dram was tempered by the knowledge that whisky was our main source of income. Granted, he likely had more of the lesser vintages—did whisky have a vintage? Possibly not …
Jamie interrupted these musings by reaching into his sporran, from whence he withdrew a small wooden object.
“I almost forgot. Here’s the wee bawbee ye asked me for.”
It was a cylinder, roughly two inches in diameter, three inches long, and tapered so that it was wider at the top. It had been carefully sanded and rubbed with oil, the sides glossy smooth, and the edges beveled and smoothed as well.
“Oh, that’s lovely, Jamie—thank you!” He’d made it from a piece of rock maple, and the grain swirled beautifully around the curve of the wood.
“Aye, nay bother, Sassenach,” he said, clearly pleased that I admired it. “What is it meant for, though? Ye didna tell me. Is it a toy for Amanda, or a teether for Rachel’s bairn?”
“Ah. No. It’s—” I stopped abruptly. I’d turned the object over in my hand and saw that he had—as he usually did with things he made—scratched his initials, JF, into the bottom of the piece.
“What’s wrong, a nighean?” He came to look, and taking my hand in his, turned it over so the peg lay exposed in my palm.
“Er … nothing. It’s just … Um. Well.” I could feel my ears getting warm. “It’s a, uh, present for Auld Mam.”
“Aye?” he looked at it, baffled.
“Do you happen to remember Roger telling me he’d been visiting up there and talked to her and she told him that when she, er, visited the privy, her … womb … fell out into her hand?”
He looked up at me, startled. Then his eyes returned to the thing in my hand.
“It’s, um, called a pessary. If you insert it into the—”
“Stop right there, Sassenach.” He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, lips pursed.
“It’s really beautiful,” I assured him. “And it will be perfect. It’s just—I thought—maybe having your mark on it would make her feel … self-conscious?” It had also occurred to me that Auld Mam, being Not Quite Right in the Head, might, conversely, feel special, singled out by Himself. Which was well and good, but might easily lead to her removing the pessary in company to show it off.
He gave me a look, reached out, and delicately tweezed the pessary from my palm with two fingers.
“Not nearly as self-conscious as it would make me, Sassenach, I tell ye. I’ll sand it off.”
83
The Forefeather of a Great Horned Owl
RACHEL’S FINGERS TREMBLED, TYING the knot of Oggy’s clout, and the end slipped out of her left hand, the clout came apart, and Oggy’s small penis, exposed to cold air, instantly stiffened and sent a jet of steaming urine a good three feet in the air, narrowly missing her face.
Ian, sitting on the bed half dressed beside his son, laughed like a loon. Rachel gave him a look of annoyance, and he stopped laughing, though the grin stayed on his face as he took the damp cleaning rag from her hand. He slid down onto the floor and began mopping up, saying something to Oggy in Mohawk. The words seemed to burrow under her skin, itching.
He’d been talking to Oggy in Mohawk more and more as they crossed into New York, drawing ever nearer to Canajoharie. Not that she blamed him. Patience and Prudence were enchanted by the sound of the language and could now say a number of useful things, including “Don’t kill me,” “Give me food,” “No, I don’t want to lie with you,” and “I belong to Wolf’s Brother, of the Wolf clan of the Kahnyen’kehaka, and he will castrate you if you molest me.”
She could hear them solemnly practicing these remarks in the next room, where Jenny was helping Silvia to get everyone dressed in what passed for their best. For today, they would reach Canajoharie.
She felt as though she’d swallowed a half pint of musket balls, these rolling heavily in her stomach. They had worried—well, she had—about encountering roving soldiers, random battles, or the men war cuts loose from society, but with the help of God, Ian’s skill at seeing things coming and avoiding them, and—no doubt—sheer blind luck, they had crossed seven hundred miles without meeting serious trouble. But today they would reach Canajoharie—and, just possibly, meet Works With Her Hands. “She was lovely. I met her by the water—a pool in the river, where the water spreads out and there’s not even a ripple on the surface, but ye feel the spirit of the river moving through it just the same.”