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.
The general farted.
It was a long, loud, rumbling fart, and the night was filled with a stench so terrible that Brianna huffed out all the air in her lungs in a vain effort to escape it.
Someone laughed, out of sheer shock. It was a high-pitched giggle, and for a moment she thought she’d done it herself and clapped a hand to her mouth. The tent dissolved into embarrassed, half-stifled laughter punctuated by gasps and choking as the entire rotting essence of General Pulaski’s insides filled the atmosphere. Admiral d’Estaing turned hastily aside and threw up in the corner.
She had to breathe … She grunted, as though the smell had punched her, and her stomach puckered. It was like breathing rancid lard, a fatty foulness that slicked the inside of her nose and throat.
“Come on.” William grabbed her by one arm, John Cinnamon by the other, and they had her out of the tent in a ruthless instant, knocking General Lincoln out of their way.
It was raining hard outside by now and she gulped air and water, breathing as deep as she could.
“Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God …”
“Was that worse, do you think, than the dead bear in the wood above Gareon?” John Cinnamon asked William, in a meditative voice.
“Lots,” William assured him. “Oh, Jesus, I’m going to be sick. No, wait …” He bent over, arms folded over his stomach, and gulped heavily for a moment, then straightened up. “No, it’s all right, I’m not. Are you?” he asked Brianna. She shook her head. Cold water was running down her face and her sleeves were pasted to her arms, but she didn’t care. She would have jumped through a hole in Arctic ice to cleanse herself of that. A slime of rotten onions seemed to cling to her palate. She cleared her throat hard and spat on the ground.
“My sketchbox,” she said, wiping her mouth and looking toward the tent. There had been a general hasty exodus, and men were scattering in every direction. Admiral d’Estaing and his officers were jostling down a footpath toward a large, lighted green tent that glowed like an uncut emerald in the distance. General Lincoln, his hat full of rain, was looking about helplessly as his adjutants and orderlies tried in vain to keep a torch lighted. General Pulaski’s resting place, by contrast, was deserted and pitch dark.
“He put the candles out,” said William, and sniggered very briefly. “Good thing the tent didn’t explode.”
“That would have been quite fun,” Cinnamon said, with obvious regret. “And fitting, too, for a hero. Still, your sister’s drawings … I’ll toss you to see who goes in to get them.” He fumbled in his pocket and withdrew a shilling.
“Tails,” said William at once. Cinnamon tossed, caught the coin on the back of his hand with a slap, and peered at it.
“I can’t see.” If there was a moon, it was covered with rainclouds, and the pouring night was dark as a wet black blanket.
“Here.” Brianna reached out and ran her fingertips over the wet, cold face of the coin. And it was a face, though she couldn’t tell whose. “Heads,” she said.
“Stercus,” William said briefly, and, unwinding his wet stock, rewound it around his lower face and plunged down the path toward the dark tent.
“Stercus?” Bree repeated, turning to John Cinnamon.
“It means ‘shit’ in Latin,” the big Indian explained. “You aren’t a Catholic, are you?”
“I am,” she said, surprised. “And I do know some Latin. But I’m pretty sure ‘stercus’ isn’t in the Mass.”
“Not one I’ve ever heard,” he assured her. “I thought you wouldn’t be Catholic, though. William isn’t.”
“No.” She hesitated, wondering just how much this man knew about William and the complications of their shared paternity. “You … er … have you been traveling with William for some time?”
“A couple of months. He didn’t tell me about you, though.”
“I suppose he wouldn’t have.” She paused, not sure whether to ask what—if anything—William had told him.
Before she could decide, William himself was back, gasping and gagging, the sketchbox under his arm. He thrust it at her, yanked the stock down off his face, turned aside, and threw up.
“Filius scorti,” he said, breathless, and spat. “That was the worst …”
“Mrs. MacKenzie?” A familiar voice came out of the darkness, interrupting him. “Is that you, ma’am?” It was Lieutenant Hanson, drenched to the skin, but holding a dark lantern. The rain plinked on its metal, and water vapor drifted through the slit of light.
“Over here!” she called, and the lantern turned in their direction, the rain suddenly visible needles of silver falling through the light.
“Come with me, ma’am,” Lieutenant Hanson said, reaching them. “I’ve found some shelter for you and your … um …”
“Thank God,” William said. “And thank you, too, Lieutenant,” he added, bowing.
“Of course. Sir,” Hanson said uncertainly. He lifted the lantern, showing them the path, and Bree thanked him and started down it, followed by William and Cinnamon. She heard a small noise from one of them, though, and turned round. Lieutenant Hanson had stopped, looking toward the tent where Casimir Pulaski lay in darkness.
Hanson lifted the lantern a little, in salute, and in a low, clear voice said, “Pozegnanie.” Then he turned with decision and came toward his waiting charges.
“It means ‘farewell’ in Polish,” he said to Brianna, matter-of-factly. “He used to say that to us, when he left us for the night.”
96
One Thing of Value
THE SMALL WOODEN STRUCTURE to which Lieutenant Hanson escorted them might originally have been a chicken coop, Brianna thought, ducking beneath the flimsy lintel. Someone had been living in it, though; there were two rough pallets with blankets on the floor, a chipped and stained pottery ewer and basin between them, and an enameled tin chamber pot in much better condition.
“I do apologize, ma’am,” Lieutenant Hanson said, for the dozenth time. “But half our tents have blown away and the men are holding down the rest.” He held his lantern up, peering dubiously at the dark splotches seeping through the boards of one wall. “It seems not to be leaking too badly. Yet.”
“It’s perfectly fine,” Brianna assured him, hunching out of the way so her two large escorts could squeeze in behind her. With four people inside the shed, there was literally no room to turn around, let alone lie down, and she clutched her sketchbox under her cloak, not wanting it to be trampled.
“We are obliged to you, Lieutenant.” William was bent nearly double under the low ceiling, but managed a nod in Hanson’s direction. “Food?”
“Directly, sir,” Hanson assured him. “I’m sorry there’s no fire, but at least you’ll be out of the rain. Good night, Mrs. MacKenzie—and thank you again.”
He squirmed past the bulk of John Cinnamon and disappeared into the blustery night, clutching his hat to his head.
“Take that one,” William said to Brianna, jerking his chin at the bed sack farthest from the leaking wall. “Cinnamon and I will take the other in shifts.”
She was too tired to argue with him. She laid down her sketchbox, shook the blanket, and when no bedbugs, lice, or spiders fell out, sat down, feeling like a puppet whose strings had just been cut.