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.
“Silvia!”
Rachel stood frozen, warm milk dribbling over her fingers.
Both voices together said, in tones of accusation, “What is thee doing here?”
“Lord, have mercy,” Rachel said, under her breath, and took two steps to the corner of the necessary, peering cautiously round it.
“I—I—” GABRIEL’S FACE was pale with shock, but Rachel could see that he bore the signs of work, long months of exposure to the sun, and the marks of starvation, not that long in the past. “I— Silvia? It is thee? Really thee?”
Silvia’s shoulders were shaking under her gray cloak. She lifted a trembling hand to her face, as though wondering whether it really was her.
“It … is,” she said, sounding doubtful, but the hand dropped, and she took a few steps toward her husband and stopped, staring at him. Her head tilted as she looked down, and Rachel saw that in addition to the stick he had dropped, he had a crutch tucked under one arm, and the leg and foot on that side were oddly twisted.
“What happened to thee?” Silvia whispered, and her hand went out toward him. He made a small, convulsive movement as though to take her hand, but then drew back.
“I—was taken. By Shawnee. They brought me north; one night I escaped. That made them angry, and they—chopped my foot in half.” He swallowed. “With an ax.”
“Oh, Christ Jesus, have mercy!”
“He did,” Gabriel said, mustering a very small smile from somewhere. “They didn’t kill me. I still had value as a slave. What—”
“Thee is a slave here?” Silvia was beginning to get a grip on her emotions; her voice held indignation as well as shock.
Gabriel shook his head, though.
“No. The Lord did protect me; the Shawnee sold me to a band of Mohawk who had with them a Jesuit priest—they were escorting him to a mission in Canada. He spoke only French, and I had little enough of that, but he bound and poulticed my wound and I showed him that I could write and figure, and he persuaded my captors that I would be worth more to a man of property than working someone’s fields.”
“Mr. Brant?” Silvia sounded utterly horrified, and Rachel was, too.
“Eventually.” Gabriel sounded suddenly tired, and the lines in his face showed stark. “I am—not a slave here, though. I am … free.”
Free.
The word hung in the cold morning air, glistening and sharp as an icicle. No one spoke for a moment, but the unspoken words were as clear to Rachel as if they’d been shouted.
Then why did thee not come home? Or at least send word that thee was not dead?
“Have—has thee been well, Silvia?” Gabriel stood still, leaning on his crutch. He wore no wig and the cold wind lifted his fine, thinning hair so it shimmered for a moment, like a fleeting halo.
Silvia laughed at that, a high, half-hysterical titter.
“No,” she said, stopping abruptly. “No, I have not. I had no money and little help. But I have kept my girls fed, as best I could.”
“The girls. Pru and Patience, they’re with you? Here?” The excitement in his voice was unfeigned, and Rachel’s shoulders relaxed a bit. Perhaps he had been constrained from leaving, even though no longer a slave.
“Prudence, Patience, and little Chastity,” Silvia said, with a note in her voice that dared him to ask. “Yes, they are with me.”
He froze for a moment, looking closely at her face. Even from the back, Rachel could easily envision what Silvia’s expression must be: shame, defiance, hope … and fear.
“Chastity,” he repeated, slowly. “When was she born?”
“February the fourth, in ’78,” Silvia replied clearly, defiance uppermost, and Gabriel’s face hardened.
“I take it thee married again,” he said. “Is thy … husband … with thee?”
“I did not marry,” she said through her teeth.
He looked shocked. “But—but—”
“As I told thee. I kept my children fed.”
Rachel felt that she really must not be witness to such painful intimacies between the Hardmans. But a dried honeysuckle vine had attached itself to her clothing and her feet were sunk in the remains of dead tomato plants; the wind had died suddenly and there was no way she could move in the midst of this ghastly silence without detection.
“I see,” Gabriel said at last. His voice was colorless, and he stood for several moments, hands knotted before him, clearly making up his mind about something. His face changed as he thought, and the emotions of anger, pity, shame, and confusion smoothed into a hard surface of decision.
“I did marry,” he said quietly. “A Mohawk woman, the niece of the Sachem. He is—”
“I know who he is.” Silvia’s voice sounded faint and far away.
Another long moment of silence, and Rachel heard the tiny clicking noise as Gabriel licked his lips.
“The … Mohawk have a different notion of marriage,” he said.
“I would assume they do.” Silvia still sounded as though she were a hundred miles away, taking part in this conversation by means of smoke signals.
“I could—I could … have two wives.” He didn’t look as though the prospect of dual matrimony was a pleasant one.
“No, thee can’t,” Silvia said coldly. “Not if thee thinks I would be one of them.”
“I shouldn’t think thee would judge me,” Gabriel said stiffly. “I have uttered no word of reproach for—”
“The look on thy deceitful face is reproach enough!” The shock had worn off, and Silvia’s voice cracked with fury. “How dare thee, Gabriel! How long has thee been here, with every facility for writing and communication, and thee sent no word? Had I been a respectable widow, and had thee not separated us from Yearly Meeting and other Friends in Philadelphia—I would have married again, deeply though I mourned thee.” Her voice broke and she breathed audibly, trying to regain her control.
“But no one knew whether thee was dead, detained, or … or what! I couldn’t marry. I was left with nothing … nothing … save that house. A roof over our heads. The army took my goats and trampled my garden, and I sold everything other than a bed and a table. And after that …”
“Chastity,” Gabriel said, in a nasty tone.
Silvia was upright as an oak sapling, fists clenched at her sides and trembling with rage. When she spoke, though, her voice was calm and ringing.
“I divorce thee,” she said. “I married thee in good faith, I loved and comforted thee, I gave thee children. And thee has abandoned me, thee has treated me in bad faith and intend to continue doing so. There is no marriage between us. I divorce and disown thee.”
Gabriel looked completely flabbergasted. Rachel understood that divorce was possible between Friends but had never known anyone who had done it. Had such a thing really just happened in front of her?
“You. Divorce me?” For the first time, anger flushed his face. “If anyone was to declare the union between us void—”
“I did not deceive my spouse. I did not commit bigamy. But I will say that our marriage is ended, and thee has no means by which to prevent me.”
Rachel had edged out of sight in reflex, a palm clutched over her mouth, as though she might exclaim in protest at the scene before her. She was preparing to steal away when Gabriel spoke again.
“Of course, I will keep Patience and Prudence,” he assured Silvia, and Rachel froze. She felt obliged to peek cautiously round the building again, if only to be sure that Silvia’s silence did not mean she’d dropped dead from shock or fury.