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 will love that,” I said, smiling myself. “What does the Mohawk part of his name mean?”
“Son of the Wolf,” she said, with a glance behind the wagon. “Or Little Wolf, if you like.”
“The Wolf?” I asked. “Not just any old wolf, I mean?” She shook her head, glancing at Ian, who was explaining the concept of a blood pudding to Tòtis, who seemed intrigued.
“You can’t really tell, in Mohawk, but I’m reasonably sure there’s only one Wolf of importance here,” Rachel said. I thought a slight shadow crossed her face at that, but if so, it cleared when I asked if she had chosen the name Hunter for her brother.
“No,” she said, and her smile blossomed again. “Ian’s first wife chose that name. Being guided of the spirit, no doubt,” she added circumspectly. She stretched out a hand and scratched the puppy’s head, causing it to wiggle with ecstasy and scramble into her lap, licking her fingers.
“But I chose his name,” she said, ignoring the muddy paw prints on her skirt. “He’s called Skénnen.”
“Which means?”
“Peace.”
116
In Which New Friends Are Met
BY THE TIME WE reached the dooryard, I had so far recovered myself as to have devised a plan of action. And a good thing, too, as the door opened and Bluebell shot out, barking as though an invading army had just arrived. Not far from the truth, either, I thought, climbing down from the wagon. I paused to shake as much half-dried mud as I could from my skirts, then shooed everyone up the steps.
“Jenny, will you take everyone through to the kitchen? Fanny will be here in a mo— Oh, there you are, sweetheart! We have company, and all of it is hungry. Will you and Agnes rummage the pantry and the pie safe and see if you can find at least bread and butter for everyone? And have you put on anything for supper yet?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Fanny said, casting an interested eye over the serried ranks bunching up at the front door—and lingering speculatively on Prudence and Patience—and then the new puppy, which squatted at her feet and made a puddle.
“Oh, you’re so sweet!” she cried, and forgetting everything else she squatted down herself to pet Skénnen, with Bluebell lurking behind her, nosing her elbow with discontented grunts.
“Kitchen,” I repeated to Jenny, who was already marshaling everyone. “Except you,” I said, catching Young Ian by the arm.
“I’m only goin’ up to see Uncle Jamie,” he protested, gesturing toward the stairs.
“Oh, good,” I said, and broke into a smile. “That’s what I wanted you to do. I just want to be there when he sees you. Wait just one second, though—” The quilt was covering the surgery door, and I didn’t hear voices on the other side. I lifted the quilt far enough to put my head in and saw the captain, apparently dozing on the table, and Elspeth asleep in my big chair, her head fallen backward and her long gray hair undone from its pins and reaching nearly to the floor.
Poor things, I thought, but at least they could wait a few moments.
The bedroom door was shut, and I rapped lightly. Before I could open it, though, a firm male voice from the other side called out, “I’m havin’ a pish, Frances, and I dinna want help with it! Go up to the springhouse and fetch down some milk, aye?”
Young Ian turned the knob and opened the door, revealing Jamie, who was sitting on the side of the bed in his shirt, the bed linens rumpled and shoved aside. He was in fact not using the chamber pot, but was pale and sweating, fists pushed hard into the mattress on either side, apparently having tried to rise but been unable to gain his feet.
“Lyin’ to wee lassies, is it, Uncle?” Ian said with a grin. “Ye can go to hell for that sort o’ thing, I hear.”
“And where the bloody hell do you think you’re going?” I demanded of Jamie. He didn’t answer. I didn’t think he’d even heard me. His face suffused with delight at sight of Ian and he stood up. Then his eyes rolled up and he turned dead white and fell with a crash that shook the floor.
JAMIE CAME ROUND again in his bed, surrounded by a number of women, all frowning at him. There was a sharp pain in his chest, where Claire was repairing some stitches that had apparently torn loose when he fell over, but he was too happy to be bothered about either the needle or the scolding he was plainly about to get.
“Ye’re back, then,” he said, smiling at his sister, and then at Rachel, standing beside her. “How’s the wee mannie?”
“Bonnie,” she assured him. “Or ought it to be ‘braw,’ if it’s a boy we’re speaking of?”
“I suppose it could be both,” he said, waggling one hand in equivocation. “Braw’s more a question of fine character—brave, ken? Which I’m sure the laddie must be, wi’ such parents—and bonnie means he’s well favored to look at. And if he still looks like you, lass— Ach, Jesus!” Claire had reached the end of her stitching and without a word of warning had sloshed a cupful of her disinfectant solution over the raw wound.
Wordless only because he couldn’t say the words that came to his tongue in front of Rachel, Frances, and Agnes, he panted through the blinding sting. The women were looking at him with expressions ranging from sympathy to strong condemnation, but all with faces—even Rachel’s—tinged with the sort of smugness women were apt to display when they thought they had the upper hand of a man.
“Where’s Ian?” he said, forestalling the rebuke he saw rising to his wife’s lips. An odd shimmer of some feeling he couldn’t name ran through the women. Amusement? He frowned, looking from face to face, and raised his brows at his sister. She smiled at him, and he saw relief and happiness in her face, though it was lined with tiredness and her hair was straggling out of her wilted cap.
“He went outside to talk to a man who came lookin’ for you,” she told him. “I dinna ken what he—”
He heard Ian’s footsteps running up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time, and struggled to sit up, causing cries of alarm from the women.
“Let it bide, Sassenach,” he said, taking the cloth out of Claire’s hand. “I’ll do.”
Ian came in, a letter in his hand, and a bemused look on his face.
“Were ye expecting a visit from Mr. Partland, Uncle?” he asked.
“I was,” Jamie replied guardedly. “Why?”
“I dinna think he’s coming.” Ian handed over the letter, which was written on decent paper and sealed with someone’s thumb and a glob of candle wax. Jamie broke the seal, what was left of his blood prickling along his jaw as his heart sped up.
To Colonel James Fraser of Fraser’s Ridge, North Carolina
Dear Sir,
I write to tell you that when I received your Instruction of the 10th inst., I assembled a Party of some twenty Men and rode toward Ninety-Six without Delay, to see if the Gentleman you named should be abroad there and in a Way of causing Mischief.
The Gentleman was known to me by Sight, and when I perceived him riding down the Powder Mill Road with some Men, I accosted him and desired to know his Errand. He curst me with some Heat and desired me to go to Hell before he would tell me Anything that was not my Business to know. I said any Business involving a Group of armed Men a-horse near my Land was mine to know and he had best tell me the Truth of the Matter at once.
At this, one of his Men, whom I also recognized, drew his Pistol and fired at one of my Men, with whom he had a long-standing Disagreement over a Woman. His shot missed its Mark, but several of the Horses were unsettled by the Noise and began to dance, so it was hard to come at the Fellows and engage with them. The Gentleman, attempting to raise his Rifle and fire upon me, had the Misfortune to be unseated when his own Horse collided with Another, and he was dragged some little Way, his Horse taking Fright and himself trapped by his Bootheel having become entangled with his Stirrup.