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.
Thayendanegea turned his head sharply as a hunting owl. Ian had nothing to hide and was unmoved. After a moment, Thayendanegea nodded, though the muscles of his shoulders did not relax.
“The war,” Ian said bluntly. “You have so far cast your lot with the British, and for good reason. But we tell you now that the Americans will prevail. You will, of course, decide what is best for your people in light of that knowledge.”
The dark eyes blinked, and a cynical smile touched the corner of his mouth. Ian didn’t press things, but walked on tranquilly. The snow squeaked beneath their boots; it was getting colder.
Ian lifted this head to sniff the air; despite the clearness of the air, he felt a sense of further snow, the faint vibration of a distant storm. But what he caught on the breeze was the scent of blood.
“There!” he said under his breath, gripping Thayendanegea’s sleeve.
The glutton had momentarily disappeared, but as they watched, they saw it leap from rock to rock, like water flowing uphill, and come to rest on a high point, from which it looked down, intent.
The men said nothing but broke into a swift jog, their breath streaming white.
The moose had fallen to its knees in the shelter of a cluster of dark pines; the strong scent of its blood mingled with the trees’ turpentine, eddying around them. The wolves would be here soon.
Thayendanegea made a brief gesture to Ian, to go ahead. This wasn’t a matter of bravery or skill, only speed. The animal had broken a hind leg—it stuck out at a disturbing angle, the splintered white bone showing through the hair, and the snow around it was splattered and speckled with blood.
Weakened as it was, it raised its chest free of the icy snow and menaced them—a young male, in its first winter. Good. The meat would be fairly tender.
Even young and weakened, it was still a full-grown moose, and very dangerous. Ian dismissed any notion of cutting its throat and dispatched it quickly with a musket shot between the eyes. The moose let out a strange, hollow cry and swayed empty-eyed to one side before collapsing with a thud.
Thayendanegea nodded once, then turned and shouted into the emptiness behind them. A few men had come out with them, ranging out to hunt and leaving them alone to talk, but they would still likely be in earshot. They needed to butcher the carcass before the wolves showed up.
“Go find them,” Thayendanegea said briefly to Ian, drawing his knife. “I’ll cut the throat and keep the glutton off.” He lifted his chin, indicating the high rock where the wolverine kept a beady-eyed watch.
As Ian turned to go, he heard Thayendanegea say, almost offhandedly, “You’ll tell this to the Sachem.”
So he was taking it seriously, at least. Ian was grimly pleased at that, but not hopeful.
Before he had run a hundred yards, he heard the crunch of a riding animal’s hooves, and rounding a bend in the trail found himself face-to-face with what had to be Gabriel Hardman, riding a big, rawboned mule with a mutinous eye. Ian took a step backward, out of biting range.
“I killed a moose,” Ian said briefly, and jerked his thumb behind. “Go help him.” Hardman nodded, hesitated for a moment as though wanting to say something, but swallowed it and snapped the reins against the mule’s neck.
THE MEN WENT back together, laden with meat and exhilarated with cold and blood. It was midmorning when they returned to the house, and Rachel was looking out for them, peering out of the front window. She waved and disappeared.
Ian saw Hardman come out of the barn, where the man had helped finish the butchering.
“May I ask,” Hardman said, giving Ian a direct look, “how it came to be that you were traveling with my—with Silvia and the … girls? I take it that you were not aware I was here, as plainly Silvia wasn’t.”
“No. I came to visit the woman who was once my wife,” Ian replied. No point in being secretive; the whole of Canajoharie would know about it by this afternoon, if they didn’t already. “I had word that she and her children were in Osequa when the attack there happened, and that her husband had been killed—but none of my friends kent anything of her condition. So I thought I would come and see.”
“Indeed.” Gabriel Hardman glanced at him, one eyebrow raised.
“I have a new wife,” Ian said equably, in reply to the eyebrow. “She’s with me, and so is our son.”
“So I understand,” Hardman said. “I hear that she is a Friend?”
“She is, and she’s told me that Friends dinna hold wi’ polygamy,” Ian said. “I didna have that in mind, but if I had, I wouldna have brought her with me.”
Hardman gave him a sharp look and a short laugh.
“Silvia told you, then. Why is she with you? Why did you bring her here?”
Ian stopped and gave Hardman a look of his own.
“She did a great service for my uncle, who sent me to see after her welfare. If ye want to hear the state in which I found her and her daughters, I’ll tell ye, man, and it would serve ye right if I did.”
Hardman reared back as though he’d been punched in the chest.
“I—I couldn’t—I couldn’t go back to Philadelphia,” he said, furious. “I was a prisoner—a slave!”
Ian didn’t reply to that, but looked deliberately around him—at the house, the woods, and the open road.
“I’ll leave ye here. Go with God,” he said, and walked away.
87
In Which Rachel Paints Her Face
BRANT HAD SEEN WORKS With Her Hands the evening before, and told Ian that she would welcome his visit today, in the afternoon.
“Ye’re goin’ with me,” Ian had said firmly to Rachel. “You and the wee man both. I’ve come to see to her welfare, not to court her; it’s right for my family to be with me. Besides,” he added, breaking into a sudden smile, “I dinna want ye back here by yourself, takin’ potshots wi’ the Sachem and imagining it’s me tied to the tree.”
“And why should I do that?” she asked, hiding her own smile. “What is there about thee visiting thy former wife by thyself that should give me a moment’s uneasiness?”
“Nothin’,” he said, and kissed her lightly. “That’s my point.”
She was happy that he wanted her to go, and in fact she felt no uneasiness whatever about meeting this woman who had shared her husband’s bed and body—and a good bit of his soul, too, from the little he’d told her of his dead children.
Ha, she thought. So I am to walk up to this woman, carrying Ian’s large, healthy, beautiful son. Plainly he wants her to see that—and I am ashamed to admit that I want that, too, but I do. It is not right that she should see my inner feelings, though. I am not come to triumph over her—nor cause her to doubt her wisdom in dismissing Ian.
Consideration of what she should wear for this occasion wasn’t vanity, she assured herself. It was a desire to look … appropriate.
She had only two dresses; it would have to be the indigo. Beyond that …
Catherine had taken her to the Sachem, who had listened carefully to her request and looked at her with the sort of keen interest she’d seen on Claire Fraser’s face—and Denny’s, for that matter—when presented with some medical phenomenon like a teratoma, a hollow tumor filled with teeth or hair. But the Sachem had nodded, and with great care had shown her how to make the paint from white clay and a handful of dark dried berries, soaked in what was likely deer urine from the smell, then ground into a blue paste and mixed with some of the white clay.
Catherine had watched the process, and when the pigments were prepared and approved by the Sachem, she had taken Rachel to her boudoir so that she might use the looking glass there to apply them neatly with a rabbit’s-foot brush.