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.
She stared at him.
“You seem to know a bloody lot about it, for a guy who just rode into town.”
“A guy?” The brow flicked higher, but relaxed as he dismissed this. “I was a soldier, you know. And I know what a military camp feels like, what it should feel like. This one is …” He lifted a hand toward the ragged rows of tents. “They aren’t admitting it—hence the bombardment—but … Tighten your rein; it’s coming again.”
It did, another volley of defiant artillery, but the mules and horses merely danced and snorted this time, not taken by surprise.
“But?” she said, neatly returning to her place at his side. He gave her a sidelong smile.
“But they know the end is coming,” he finished. “But as for my knowledge of the situation, I will admit it’s more than observation. My fath—” A brief, fierce grimace crossed his face and disappeared. “Lord John told me about the battle. He wasn’t in any doubt as to the outcome, nor am I.”
“So the siege is about to lift?” she persisted, wanting certainty.
“Yes.”
“Oh, good,” she said, and let her shoulders slump in relief. He gave her an odd, interested look, but said no more and urged his horse into a faster walk.
CAPTAIN PINCKNEY WAS perhaps thirty and probably good-looking, though sleeplessness and defeat had made him haggard. He blinked as Bree alighted from her mule without assistance and turned to greet him; she topped him by four or five inches. He closed his eyes for an instant, opened them again, and bowed to her with impeccable courtesy.
“Your most obedient, Mrs. MacKenzie, and I am to give you the utmost compliments of General Lincoln and the troops. I am also to convey his deep sense of obligation and gratitude for your kind assistance.”
He spoke like an Englishman, though she thought there was a southern softness in his vowels. She didn’t try to curtsy, but bowed to him in return.
“I’m very glad to help,” she said. “I understand there may be some urgency in the … er … situation. Perhaps you could show me where General Pulaski is at the moment?”
Captain Pinckney glanced at William and John Cinnamon, who had dismounted and handed their reins to the orderly accompanying the captain.
“William Ransom, sir, your servant.” William bowed and, straightening, nodded at Cinnamon. “My friend and I have come to escort my sister. We will remain, and see her back when her errand is finished.”
“Your sister? Oh, good.” Captain Pinckney looked substantially happier at the revelation that he wouldn’t be solely responsible for her. “Your servant, sir. Follow me.”
The guns went off again, a ragged volley. This time, she didn’t jump.
THE DEAD GENERAL lay in a small, worn green tent on the riverbank, apart from the camp. This placement might have been a sign of respect, but there was a practical aspect to it, too, as Brianna discovered when Captain Pinckney removed a crumpled but clean handkerchief from his sleeve and handed it to her before courteously raising the tent flap for her.
“Thank y— Oh, my God.” A few late flies rose sluggishly from the corpse, wafted on a rising stink that shrouded him more thoroughly than the clean sheet over his face and upper body.
“Gangrene,” William said behind her, under his breath. “Jesus.” John Cinnamon coughed heavily, once, and fell silent.
“I do apologize, Mrs. MacKenzie,” Pinckney was saying. He’d taken hold of her elbow, as though afraid she might either bolt or faint.
“I—It’s all right,” she managed, through the folds of the handkerchief. It wasn’t, but she stiffened her spine, tensed her stomach muscles, and edged up to the makeshift bier on which they’d laid Casimir Pulaski. William stepped up beside her at once. He didn’t say anything or touch her, but she was glad of his presence.
With a sidelong glance to be sure she wasn’t about to faint, Captain Pinckney drew down the sheet.
The general was pale, eyes closed, his skin faintly mottled with purplish undertones and a greenish tinge about the jawline. She’d have to adjust that; they might want a death portrait, but she was pretty sure they didn’t actually want him to look really dead—just … romantically dead. She swallowed and tasted the thick, sweetly nasty air, even through the cloth. She coughed, breathed out strongly through her nose, and moved closer.
“Romantic” is the word, she thought. He had a high brow (and a slightly receding hairline …), a small dark mustache, neatly waxed to make the ends turn up, and his features were an interesting mix of strength and delicacy. He had no expression; he must have lapsed into unconsciousness before he died (and a good thing if he did, poor man …).
“Did he—does he have a wife?” she asked, remembering her own feelings when she’d thought for an instant that Roger—
“No,” Pinckney said. His eyes were fixed on Pulaski’s face. “He never married. No money, of course. And no interest, really, in women.”
“His family in Poland?” Brianna ventured. “Perhaps I should make a likeness for them, as well?”
Captain Pinckney lifted his gaze then, but only to exchange a brief glance with Lieutenant Hanson.
“He didn’t speak of them, ma’am,” the lieutenant said, and bit his lip, looking down at the dead man. “He—” He swallowed, audibly. “He was kind enough to say that we—we were his family.”
“I see,” she said quietly, and did. “For all of you, then.”
She glanced down at the body, absently noting the details of the clean dress uniform in which they’d clothed him and wondering morbidly exactly where and how he’d been wounded. Could she ask?
There was a deep gash in Pulaski’s head, starting just above one temple, the wound a reddish black, with tiny crumbs of blackened skin along its edges. Looking closer, where the gash disappeared under the general’s hair, she thought she perceived … without thinking, she put out a finger and felt the cold skull give under her touch, light as it was. She heard Captain Pinckney draw in a sharp breath and hastily removed the finger.
“Grapeshot?” William asked, sounding mildly interested.
“Yes, sir,” Captain Pinckney replied, with an air of somber rebuke that she felt was aimed at her. “He was struck in several places—in the body and head.”
“Poor man,” Brianna said softly. She felt a strong urge to touch him again—to lay a hand gently on his chest, covered by the silver-banded red facing of his uniform—the uniform had a high collar, made of some kind of white fur … no, it was lambswool, lined with grubby pink velvet—but felt she couldn’t, under the censorious gaze of the captain.
“The doctor—our doctor—thought he might be saved.” Pinckney had lowered his voice discreetly, talking directly to William. “He was conscious, speaking … but he insisted upon being taken aboard the Wasp, and the navy doctor …” He cleared his throat explosively and took a deep breath. “It was the wound in his groin that went bad, or so I was told.”
“A great shame, sir,” William said, and clearly meant it. “A very gallant gentleman.”
“Yes, sir,” the captain said, and she could tell that he had warmed toward William.
“I understand that my sister is to make a likeness of the general,” William said, and she looked up. He nodded to her, then tilted his head toward the captain. “Would you tell Captain Pinckney what things you require for the task, sister?”
Hearing the word “sister” in his voice again gave her an odd little bloom of warmth in the middle of her chest.